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A few weeks ago I had a really sore back.  REALLY sore.  I couldn’t even walk right at work.  People were saying “Are you ok?” and I thought “Yeah, I just have a really sore back and I don’t know why.”

Later on in the day I figured out exactly why I had a sore back…I was throwing Sierra up and down a dozen times as she was laughing hysterically.

I remember when Vero first told me she was pregnant with Sierra…I hopped on the elliptical with the idea of ‘getting in shape’.  I didn’t want to be in a position in my life where I couldn’t do certain things with my kids.  Sure enough, I lost a bunch of weight but I never really did anything to increase my strength.  I didn’t notice that it was an issue at first considering it’s not really hard to take care of someone under thirty pounds for a few years!

Fast forward to three years later and clearly it’s starting to become an issue!

Andre has really great taste in t-shirts

I contacted my pal Andre with my dilemma…help me get to a point where I can lift my kid up a dozen times without being in pain for three days afterwards!

The key with any type of exercise is finding something that you don’t mind doing.  I hate jogging.  But I love walking!  So I walk.  I also really enjoy the elliptical.  So Andre figured out some interval training I could do with the elliptical which is fantastic.

A week and a half into scapular pushups, squats, lunges, etc etc etc and I’m finally not sore after a workout.  🙂  We’ll see how long this keeps up.  I have a feeling the goal of not being sore while throwing kids up into the air will keep me wanting to be fit the rest of my life.

Andre approves of this post

Sierra is quite excited for the baby to arrive.  She is also very inclusive of the family as she frequently says things like “We are taking a ride…Maman, Dad, Sierra and the baby in the belly of Maman!”

After Mom and Dad visited at the end of June I realized that Sierra can understand English perfectly but I haven’t really been forcing her to speak it.  It’s time to change that up seeing that it’s getting harder for English folk to understand what Sierra is babbling on about.  The past month has been home to me always saying “Now…how do you say that in English?”  She sits for a second and then says the entire sentence again in French other than the final word!”  It’s a start!

Vero brought Sierra to the dentist and they said that she can’t swallow the new toothpaste that they gave her.  So the past month has been introducing Sierra to the concept of spitting into the sink.  She finds taking a gulp of water and spitting into the sink to be a hilarious experience!  I’m still not sure if she isn’t swallowing the toothpaste but I haven’t seen a tummy ache yet.

July has been home to some killer weather here so we are happy we purchased air conditioning!  I believe Vero would have sweated herself away if it wasn’t for the air conditioning.  Sierra has woken up a few times in the past month because she is cold so I had to teach her to PULL THE SHEET AND BLANKET UP TO STAY WARM!  We just decided to set her room at 75 degrees which seems fine with her.  It’s not like she’s waking up in sweat.

Dad and Sierra watching Dora the Explorer.  Sierra LOVES this show…we can’t seem to ween her off of it!

Mom teaching Sierra how to wax on and wax off.  I have to say that this Karate Kid book is quite good.  Although I was cringing when I came to the part where Cobra Kai are about to kick Daniel’s ass…that’s a little scary.  I think Sierra said something like “Daniel bobo?”  “Yep…Daniel’s going to get some bobos soon kid!”

This is a neat snack idea that Mom and Dad picked up during their trip through the United States of America.  It’s a cob that you put in the microwave which produces popcorn!

Now that Mom is back in town, it’s time to fix up Sierra’s new bedroom!  Here we are figuring out how a decal works.

It went up pretty good with the help of a level and Mom.

It was surprisingly easy to find Dora stickers on Amazon.  I would have thought there isn’t anything left in that department since the show is so old.

Here’s Sierra seeing her stickers for the first time.  She was quite excited.

On June 29, 2019, Dad has a poutine for the first time.  I still have a hard time believing he didn’t have a bite before.  I don’t think he will have another one.  But the trip to St-Albert was fun.

The family inspecting how curds are made.

The patio is getting finished slowly but surely!  We didn’t care for the look of lattice where we could avoid it so we decided to put deck boards here.  This provides an advantage over the lattice….the upper deck seems to heave and we had that issue with the past deck and every time it would come back down in the spring the lattice wouldn’t be aligned.  This way we are hoping to avoid that issue.

Someone brought a bouncy castle to Mike’s birthday BBQ!  It was pretty cool.  I’m always amazed at how Sierra has no fear on these things.

Hanging out near the campfire

Checking out the swing!

Happy Canada Day!  Considering there was nothing going on in Vars this year we decided to head to Russell where they had a parade.  Sierra enjoyed seeing the horses.

“This snow cone is making my brain freeze Dad!”

Russell had a really great setup for the Canada Day celebration.  Bouncy castles, BBQ and live entertainment!  Here we were taking a break from the sun and listening to some tunes.

It takes awhile for Sierra to warm up to the bouncy castles but when she gets in she doesn’t want to leave!

Sure this photo has Sierra in it but really all I wanted was a photo of this glorious beard!

Alan and Joelle invited us over for a Canada Day BBQ.  It took a LOT of coaxing to get Sierra into the pool.  She didn’t remember how much of a great time she had the year prior.  Here’s a great action shot of her finally taking the plunge!

Mike was dog sitting for a few days.

I’m not even sure which playground this is from!  Vero must have went around town with Sierra.

Spider-Man makes a rare appearance with her handy drill!

Rumour has it that Sierra was not too impressed with the splash pad with Jenna and Jan.

I’m coming across a bunch of pictures that I haven’t seen before and I am now remembering that Vero stopped working at the beginning of July and decided to take Sierra out of daycare for that week.  Here she is having some fun next to the pool.

Sierra looks so tall next to this giant toothbrush!  Supposedly the first visit to the dentist went ok.  I don’t think she held her mouth open long.

POOOOLLLL PARRTTTTYYYYY!!!!

Petrie Island was calling our name!  Vero had a great idea to head to the beach.  It was quite hot for the past few weeks.  Sierra was quite excited to play with her new sand bucket.    

This photo, along with some back pain after throwing Sierra up and down in the air a dozen times is what prompted me to start getting into some strength training shortly after this!  We’ll see how long that lasts!

It took awhile for Sierra to get used to the waves but she needed water for her sand castle so she asked me to come along for the walk.

The morning at Petrie Island was a success other than a sunburn in the middle of our backs where we missed the suntan lotion!  Also, I love how the apple shows up in this picture because Sierra passed it over to me afterwards wanting me to eat it but it was full of sand.  Not a fun experience but you can’t say no!

Water gun fun!

We haven’t gone out for a bike ride yet this month so we decided to go out on one of the hottest days! 

We are pretty impressed that Sierra somehow learned how to swing by herself.  There’s some eight year olds out there in the world that haven’t even learned this skill yet!

What better place to do artwork at daycare than outside in the sand area?

Dance!

I feel this scene is out of a mobster movie.  “Let me show you my collection.”

We sent a bunch of photos to Nanny and Sierra personalized each one.  Here’s a sample.

We had the neighbours over for a bbq and the swing set was a hit for all ages!

A giant t-boomer of a storm rolled in and all our guests left around 8pm.  Sierra and I sat on the front porch watching it all come down.

Sierra finally got her new tricycle!  By new, I mean one that has been handed down the generations.  This was Vero’s tricycle back in Hearst!

We went to the Limoges water park one morning.  I have to admit that I had visions of it being as warm as it was the week before but it wasn’t really.  The water was really cold as well!  So…we played a game of avoiding the water.

I’m not sure if I made a posting about this already but if not, here it is!  Vero went out to see Backstreet Boys at Bluesfest.  I was quite surprised to find out that it was the largest crowd of the festival…I guess people really love the Backstreet Boys!

Mike and Melanie picked up this for Sierra’s birthday.  Yoda lives!

It was pretty neat to see an artist at work.

A few weeks later he is still at it!

So the ongoing joke at work is that I was receiving a certificate for 15 years of service and that I wanted the name Guy Terrifico to appear on it.  After months of waiting, I never saw it.  Not a big deal, it’s just a piece of paper.  But my bud Matt made me a certificate signed by the Prime Minister himself (that’s the PM passing me the certificate in the photo above!).

This is my view from my daily walk.  Beautiful!

Enjoying a smoked meat sandwich.  That’s a new choice from P’tit Epicerie!

What kid doesn’t love trying to go up a slide this way?

Sierra and I were lucky to be invited over to Max’s house for some pizza supper on a Friday night.  We even got strawberries and whipped cream!

Another visit to Petrie Island!  We found a spot under a tree so we could get some shade. 

While watching another t-boomer on the front porch, I taught Sierra how to take a selfie.  There are a hundred pictures like this.

Hey, she managed to frame her face pretty well in this shot!

I didn’t realize we had a vampire in the house!

Sierra showing Oncle Claude and Aunt Mary how to take a selfie.

Etienne’s 40th birthday party after work!  It was hooooottttttt out.

I went up to the ninth floor to take a shot of the Cirque du Soleil setting up shop across the road.

When it’s a sweltering day and you get home, what better way to cool down than with the sprinkler?!  

Seriously, we need to get her eating different coloured popsicles!  She looks like Gene Simmons!

Rob and Jan invited us out to their campsite at Cedar Shades.  We went swimming in a quarry and had a good lunch.  It was a really neat spot for kids!

 

 

 

Sierra gets really excited when she sees this comet.

Anyone can hum you the theme of all the great television shows…Star Trek, Cheers, The Simpsons.  They are ingrained into our brains after watching it over and over and over and over again.

However, if we aren’t careful, our kids won’t have any theme songs to whistle to.

In the era of streaming media, an interesting feature has popped up: ‘skip intro’.

I, like you, use this feature a lot.  Why would I waste my time watching the same intro over and over and over again when I can shave off a minute and get right back into the action I want to watch?

The answer to that question is…because the theme song is meant to be watched over and over and over again.

You know who taught me that?  Sierra.

I’ve been watching Star Trek Deep Space Nine and I would generally skip over the intro but it wasn’t until Sierra was sitting with me that I noticed she got SUPER EXCITED when the comet starts flying across the screen and the theme music comes in.  I skipped it one morning and she was really upset.  I didn’t understand what was going on until I rewinded it and she sat there comfortable in watching something she loved.  I’m not sure if it was the imagery, or the music, or the combination of both.

While watching the intro with her I thought about all the theme songs I grew up with and love and how new shows just don’t have that anymore because people just skip to the action.  Yet another piece of our collective culture being whittled away.

We can’t even chat at the office about the show we all watched yesterday because we all watched different things…now we can’t even remember the theme song to the show we watched?  What has happened?!

I’m glad it was Sierra that showed me how to love a theme song again.

Mike and I had a pint of Nord-Est at Le Troquet before walking over to Bluesfest.  It was looking to be a perfect night weather wise!

Mel recommended the Bluefest special slice of pizza from Gabriel’s – bbq sauce and chicken with some onions.  Tasty!

I had forgot that KISS was in town for Bluesfest this year!

This was my first time in the Barney Danson Theatre.  I expected an actual theatre with theatre style seating but it was not as expected.  While I appreciate some air conditioning and a spot to sit so close to the band, I find this isn’t conducive to good interaction from the crowd.  Even the band commented on how nicely we were sitting in our spots.  🙂  But we were pretty enthusiastic for my favourite band from Ottawa…Loon Choir!  They played a bunch of songs from their new album and they still got the magic that hooked me when I first saw them at CityFolk years ago.  Do not pass this band up!

Sidenote about their new LP: I picked up their vinyl album and it came with a digital download.  First off, I don’t really agree with bands not putting CDs out because I’m an old dinosaur.  But I’m alright with it if they provide high quality audio to download and this is exactly what Loon Choir.  PLUS they snuck in a bonus track which wasn’t on streaming media or on the vinyl record either…a song called Heartache.  Sneaky!

We also checked out Busty and the Bass which seemed entertaining with their horn section and Blakdenim who were all kinds of awesome and they are from Ottawa so I will have to definitely check them out again.  I did not manage to snap photos of them.

We stumbled into old volleyball mates…Wes and Amanda!  Screaming Banshees reunite!

The Offspring still got it!  I was surprised at how good the show was.  Noodles (guitarist) made me realize how good we have it with Bluesfest when he said he had never seen a 10 day festival before in his life!  I also love how he referred to Ottawa as Awfuckyeahttawa.

Here’s the deal with Alexisonfire.  I only know a couple of tunes.  They are just a band that escaped me in the 2000s when I was focussed more on learning about classic rock.  But they were all kinds of awesome and the crowd was loving them.  They broke up a few years ago but they are back at playing a few concerts here and there through the year.  I’ll have to dive into their discography.

I didn’t realize a picture was being taken.

I snuck over to see Guided by Voices during the Alexisonfire set.  I’m not entirely sure what I witnessed.  It was weird…it was like they had a medley of 12 songs and the lead singer escaped from a nursing home.  I was glad when it was over and I went back to Alexisonfire.

While it wasn’t the gauntlet of 10 days in a row like years before, it was nice to get out for a few days, see some friends, have some beers and enjoy the music.  We are lucky here in Ottawa to have festivals like this.  Here’s to another 25 years of Bluesfest!

 

 

Well at this point, even if I might not feel ready, there’s nothing much else I can do!  The baby is coming quickly and life will never be the same.

Let’s be honest…it’s the lack of sleep that is the ultimate fear followed by the question of how Sierra will be around the Sequel.  Sierra is quite hard headed like someone else in our family and I can only imagine how her tantrums will be when she starts realizing she can’t get her way anymore.  Ah well, every other family lives through this and it will be an adventure!

The Sequel’s room is nearly set up.  We can hold off on the crib for awhile since the baby will sleep in a bassinet.

I’m very interested to see if our tricks with Sierra work with a second baby.  For example, other than Sierra’s allergies keeping her up, I feel we didn’t have a whole lot of trouble on the sleeping front.  Now…was this nature vs. nurture?  My theory is that a baby doesn’t know what a world outside their mother is so nurture can help the baby adapt.  Let the kid sleep in a noisy living room with the TV on.  Much like me moving to Bayshore in 1998 and I couldn’t sleep with the OC Transpo buses driving by all night long….I got used to it.  Humans can adapt so I theorize that babies can too.  But who knows…maybe I’m off my rocker and this kid will be completely different.

I believe having another kid is exciting because you get to see if the experience is different.  It’s like playing a familiar video game but some game mechanics change slightly.

We are both pretty excited that we installed air conditioning this summer.  It’s helped out Vero quite a bit.  I noted that Vero seemed to grow larger a lot quicker this time around but at the same time I was looking at her face and it didn’t seem to really change this time around compared to last time.  Let’s do a comparison shot!

Here was Vero around April 2016, a month before giving birth.

Here she is in 2019.  Hmm…quite a bit larger actually!

Just kidding of course!  Here is Vero on Canada Day which is about six weeks before the due date.  This was the only full body shot I had.  Most other pictures are of her on the couch!  🙂

Here’s the sequel around the end of June.

Here we are listening for signs of life.  Sierra said she was humming Star Trek!

The Sequel and Sierra hanging out at the beach.

I’m not sure why Vero took this photo.  It was either a shot of her swollen foot or a picture to send to the pedicure…office?  Centre?  Pedicurist? to see if she was eligible or if she was too far gone.

The Sequel went to see the Backstreet Boys when they came to Bluesfest.  I had about a dozen people lined up to help out Vero if she went into labour!

Sierra is getting excited to be a big sister.  I think she likes the idea of it, but the reality will hit her soon enough when she realizes that she has to do things on her own from now on and get a lot less help from her parents!

You know what I’m finding annoying these days during the summer?  Ticks.  We even got word that there was a confirmed Lyme disease tick found in Vars after it had bit a two year old.  Great, just great.  So now I always have to put bug spray on Sierra and search her carefully during bath time.

Sierra and I suffered from a five day fever which was something I had never experienced before.  I even went back to work after a week and was still pretty weak but now I’m tip-top shape.  Hey, want a fast weight loss program?  Don’t eat for three days!

Sierra received a fun talking dinosaur from Uncle John, Aunt Maureen and Abbey!  She loves it!

Here she is learning how to pick up the mail.

I don’t know what they were doing but whatever it is looked really fun!

She’s getting really good at holding onto this tire.

We were trying out a new game called Junkart.  It’s quite fun and easy to learn.  You have to build ‘art’ without it falling apart before all the others.

Someone got a new swing set for her birthday!  She is pretty excited about it.  I put a step stool under the swing so she can get on it herself instead of asking me!  Pro-parenting tip (or parenting fail depending on your point of view!)

It’s always a fun time when Tandreane visits.

I really love the Old Hull quarter and what they do to spice up the area.

Let it be known that regardless of it being 25 degrees outside, someone wanted to wear her winter coat.

 

I feel left out and need a parka as well.

I don’t know much about trees but I like what happens in the Spring.

Every time I play music in the car all I hear from the backseat is ‘Loud.  LOUD.”

On a lovely day in June, we got to go to Perth to see Tyler and Amy get married.  It was a beautiful day but let me tell you, I definitely chose the wrong seat to sit in.  The sun was directly in my eyes the entire ceremony!  Doh!  Ah well, it was a good ceremony.

Obligatory post-ceremony drinks in Mike’s hotel room.

We got to hang out with some great people at the supper table.  I ended up chipping my front tooth on my fork because I was so hungry!  I went to the washroom and it didn’t look too bad (thankfully!).  

Shenanigans were starting once the Tom Collins drinks came out!  All in all, it was a great night!  We headed home around midnight as we knew we had Sierra waking up at Lynn and Sue’s house around 6am.

Sierra hanging out with her friend Ryleigh.

Sierra was helping me out with the assembling of her new dresser set.  What a great helper!

She was having the time of her life running around the car trying to avoid the camera.  She wouldn’t smile for me except for this one time when I caught her by surprise.

Testing out her new seat.  The other one was a bucket style and her legs would angle upwards.  In hindsight I’m not sure if I would purchased that one again but no matter, it’s purchased now and she enjoys her new one as well!

Vero’s sister signed her up for some Tupperware starter kit so Sierra had a fun time tearing it all apart.  I still don’t really understand how a company can send a starter kit for free and not expect anything in return.

Sierra discovering some trickling water.

Air hockey is always a fun time.

All this girl wanted for her birthday was a photo with me.

I think I need one of these for myself!

JF and I had a good laugh when we realized we were wearing inverse colours.

Watching Shrek

“Not just any man…but a Spider-Man!”

I find it neat when Sierra pulls out a random book and peruses it.

We were going to head out to Franco-Festival and found out that it was pouring rain.  Wal-Mart is the best option for a rainy day!  While Vero went and shopped Sierra and I roamed around the store.  She was really interested in touching each bicycle seat.  She did this a dozen times.

I thought this was a weird tag to put on a toy.  It’s bilingual but then it says it only speaks English.

Vero found a book that her Dad must have left Sierra.  It was a book that answered life’s questions.  It was really interesting to see what a book from the 1970s talked about.  Its section about robots was intriguing.  But when it got to this page I said to Vero “I somehow don’t think this book would exist in the year 2019!”

Embrun had a community day on Father’s Day.  There were a few inflatable structures that we had fun on.

It takes Sierra awhile to get used to new adventures.  She didn’t want to go into this bouncy castle at first so we went and did other things.  But when we walked by later she decided to go inside and had a great time.

Check out this foam bath!

Here is Sierra petting a (unscented…I hope!) skunk.  I had a good laugh when we put her in line to pet the skunk and she just proceeded to go up a few spots in line.  I suppose we haven’t taught her the concept of waiting in line!

Sierra and Vero were nice enough to bring me out to Etienne Brule for lunch.  Cheers!

After our afternoon nap we hung out on the front porch.  Here we are trying to get a photo with the sun shining in our eyes.

As you can tell, it was getting to be too much for us.

A very nice card.

“Higher, higher!”

Chest-burster scene from Alien.

Dana, Etienne, Nadine and I braved the rain to go to the Ottawa Ribfest.  I had a quarter chicken, 1/3 slab of ribs, beans and coleslaw.  Let me tell you, I didn’t even need to eat supper after that much food!

The rest of the elementary school were graduating that day so they had the daycare make their own graduation caps.

My second excursion to Ribfest consisted of the entire team going for lunch.  Les 3 Brasseures had an amazing Gose beer that I had while we sat on their patio eating our ribs.  I had a good laugh when someone stopped me in the street saying “You can’t take a photo of them.  None of them are eating ribs!”

We had the honour of having Felix show up on Friday night for supper and some fun!

Vero’s cousins and sister showed up for the weekend to spend some time relaxing at the spa.

These two loved their dessert!

Jamming.

Reading ‘The Karate Kid’ before heading to bed.

It was five years ago that Carol and Danny got married.  I remember being the MC of that event and starting to get the hang of being an MC.  I had been an MC…I can’t recall…five, six times in my life.  My first couple of gigs weren’t the best but I felt I started hitting my stride by the time this one came along.  Here is the beer koozie they gave out that night and some lyrics to the song I sang as MC.

When Vero headed out to the spa with her family, I decided to make a giant day for Sierra.  First stop…visiting some friends!

It was interesting to see how Sierra interacted with a baby.  Definitely need to teach her a few things like “Don’t take the toy from the baby.”

Nat was nice enough to let us park our car at her house and then we walked over to the Limoges community day where THIS appeared.  Sierra was super excited so I said “Alright, let’s go and buy the $5 bracelet so you can go on this ride.”  We bought it, then returned and then she didn’t want to go in.  Of course!

We did have a good time on the teeter totter though.

And the skateboard ramp.

And the water park.  Sierra insisted she needed to change her shirt before going into the water.  I had a good laugh at that.

But she managed to surprise me and while walking past the Dora bouncy castle she said she wanted to go in!  The $5 bracelet was not a waste!

Every parent has these moments where your kid surprises you.  Case in point, I’m watching Sierra climb up this mountain with kids running by and I’m thinking “Oh no, she’s going to take a tumble” and she didn’t tumble once in the four times she went up!  I was super impressed.  All in all, the Limoges Community Day was a hit and I tip my hat to that community for the activities they had set up.  I also tip my hat to Marc who had a Heady Topper beer from Vermont on hand for when we arrived back at their house!

The next day we went out to Kanata to have some lunch.  Here we were taking a walk to pick up some groceries.

Trish and I went to Almonte on Saint-Jean-Baptiste day.  I had never been so I wanted to see what it was all about.  Check out this awesome toy store!  Too bad it was closed.

We found these great wind chimes next to the river.  Almonte is quite beautiful.  Imagine having a house in the photo?

The entire downtown is surrounding these beautiful sights.

Hanging out with Dr. James Naismith, inventor of basketball!

It was a beautiful morning to walk around Almonte.  I bought a Stan Rogers album at a beautiful book store.  We also found a fantastic antique shop where I perused some old toys.  I had always thought antique shops were full of OLD things but here I was finding things that I had grown up with as a kid.  I now realize that I am officially old if antique shops hold things I once possessed!

We had lunch at the Barley Mow pub.  It was a shame the patio was packed but we’ll get there next time!

While I thought my entry was clever the winner won with “I’m sorry, I’ve been burned too many times.” which was clearly the better choice!

Mom and Dad came for a visit on their way down to Gaspe.  Sierra was having fun with the bubble gun!

 

 

 

 

I received this fantastic photo book from Sierra for Father’s Day!

Then I open it up and we realize that Costco didn’t perform their quality control check and I now own a photo album of some dude’s trip to Las Vegas!