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For historical reference:

We got the driveway sealed from a company called Canark Aphalt Sealing and Repairs.  Jumped on the opportunity as we saw practically the entire street getting it done.  While Vero and I don’t generally jump into things without a lot of research, we decided that if the entire neighbourhood is getting screwed over, well, so be it.

Financial reference: It cost $450 + tax and should last a couple of years.

Sierra is starting to get the hang of walking.

Enjoying some sun outdoors.

The neighbours dropped off with some Easter treats for Sierra.

We are fortunate enough to have acquired (thanks Kelly!) a fort/tunnel system for Sierra.  Gaetan told me he saw her do ten laps one morning!

A full car heading to Saint Jacques de Leeds for Easter weekend. 

It was a wet weekend down at Oncle Normand et Tante Sylvie’s place, but Sierra had fun meeting some new friends.

Check out the sweet helmets for dirtbiking!

I didn’t play a marathon session but we played a few tunes to entertain the masses.

Grandmaman stole my hat and Sierra thought it was funny.

View of a dreary day.

Sierra and Roxanne having fun crawling around.

While I hate motion blur for the most part, sometimes I find it is hilarious because you can see how excited Sierra was to hang out with Valérie.

Vincent being an awesome dad.

Vincent being an awesome dad.

Gabriel and Roxanne helped me change the strings on Oncle Normand’s guitar.  It was literally 40 years since the strings had been changed.  It sounded quite nice after the new strings were on.  I think Gabriel had an interest of the instrument.  I hope he pursues it!

Grandpapa and Sierra watching the hockey game.

Overall, it was a fantastic trip to Saint Jacques de Leeds.  Even though it was pouring rain, I got to see the maple syrup shack come into full force and it was interesting to see the operation.  I swear I can use this contraption to make beer somehow.  Perhaps one day I’ll have the chance.  From what I was told, it wasn’t the greatest season for making syrup which is unfortunate.  But it’s fun while it lasts.

Here’s how the month started out!

As I type this a month later, she still hasn’t mastered pushing herself forward.  But she sure loves riding on the cars.

Quite a nice shot of Ottawa if I say so myself.  This was taken from on top of the Museum of History.

Sierra loves music and she dances around like this to whatever is playing.

She also has come to LOVE Fredo the monkey.  I joked to Sierra the other day that Fredo may very well become her security blanket and we will have to carry him around everywhere we go.  Uh oh!

We went to see Grace, Lily and Harlin and they were ecstatic to see us.  We were ecstatic to see them as well!

Hanging out.

We had a few folks from Hearst show up for lunch.  It was also time to celebrate Melissa and Felix’s birthday!

This was taken about 30 seconds before she vomited all over the place.  At least we were outside!  Sierra unfortunately has some foods she is allergic to (milk protein, soy products) and sometimes we try new things on her and it doesn’t end well.  The good news is that a few weeks after this photo was taken, we tried eggs again and she didn’t have a reaction!  I guess that digestive system is strengthening up.  As Vero put it one night “Try and find a birthday cake that doesn’t have milk protein, eggs or soy!”  Difficult, indeed!

Sierra is pretty good at the supper table.  There are some days where she just throws her food everywhere, but we find that if we put it into a bowl, she tends to stick to that.  Here she is after stealing my hat.

Sierra LOVES bath time and weighing herself.

With the weather getting warmer, it’s time to start bringing her outside.  At the beginning we kept a close eye on her when she was trying to eat debris outside but as the month has gone by, we’ve realized that there’s really nothing like the taste of grass and pinecones to make you appreciate the gruel we give her at the supper table.

We dropped by St-Albert’s for a poutine with Sierra.  We are happy to report that even though we heard they changed their gravy, it still passes the test!  The gentleman behind me in this photo told us (as we were leaving) that we were great parents.  What a compliment!

Trying out the outfit that cousin Rick picked up awhile back!  Fits like a glove!

Who needs TV when we have this for entertainment?

Sierra is now entering her tenth month of existence on this fair planet so it’s time to recap her ninth month.

Nanny Ruth spied a few teeth from this photo.  She clearly has great eyesight!

Crawling: She is a motoring machine, crawling around as fast as her limbs can take her.

Having fun with the camera.

Standing: She is definitely holding herself up whenever she can…whether it’s on a pant leg, or on the dishwasher (why does our kid love the dishwasher so much?), or the coffee table…if she can prop herself up, she will do so!  She’s great at walking around with some help from an object to lean on.  However, when it comes to actually walking around, she is kind of lazy.  Some days she will take my hands and go for a spin, but most days she just collapses with those eyes that says “Yeah no Dad.  Walking is too tough.”  She has managed to stand on her own for a few seconds so far, but it’s definitely not a trend yet!

I’ve created a monster.  Sierra got upset the one time I DIDN’T carry her while vacuuming.  Vacuuming while carrying a 20 pound kid is not easy work!

Bathtime: Does your kid love bathtime as much as ours?  As soon as the water is running, she could be playing down the street and still hear that sound and come motoring down the hallway on all fours!  I love bathtime because she is just SO EXCITED!  I mean, she comes crawling in, then she realizes what’s going on and stands up next to the bathtub screaming “GAH GAH MA MA BLAH BLAH!!!” which loosely translates to “LET ME IN!!!”.  I take her clothes off and throw her into the water and she is in her natural habitat.  Over the past month she tends to not play with her rubber ducky as much as she likes splashing around and touching the bath walls.  Vero and I try and share bathtime together but more and more we are realizing that we just get a little more accomplished if we split that chore.  Plus, she is at an age where she doesn’t really fall into the tub anymore so it’s a lot easier to manage with just one of us.  Note: this does not mean that I’m just surfing the internet not keeping my eye on her!  Eagle Eye Palmer is on the job!

Definitely her father’s daughter!!

Laughing: OH MY GOD IS THERE A BETTER SOUND THAN A BABY LAUGHING?  Right now, she can laugh on command if you fake a sneeze.  Ah-ah-ahchoooo!”  She literally dies with laughter every time she hears that sound. I hope this lasts forever.  Everyone always wonders what their baby will constantly laugh at.  I just assumed it would be my face.  Luckily, it’s the sound of someone sneezing.

Getting ready to go outside.

Daycare: While I would love to clone my parents and somehow convince them to provide full-time daycare to my kids, I don’t think that’s happening anytime soon so the search for daycare is on.  Daycare is an enigma to me….too much demand, not enough supply, which results in a lot of places saying “Well, we won’t bother taking a kid unless they are 18 months old.”  We all know what that means….your kid probably will be able to walk and talk and poop on their own by then.  That’s the market place right now…it’s a hard gig finding daycare.  Anyhow, as it stands, Vero has been doing a crazy awesome job researching and phoning and meeting daycare providers and we think we found one for the time being.  I guess the end of May is coming sooner than we think and she will be put in the care of some stranger.  That is an incredibly hard concept to wrap my head around, however, I suppose the public school system is like that as well.

Teething!!

Teething: Teething must be the worst feeling in the world.  Imagine yourself growing some teeth right now…  You would want some toy to gnaw on to get those teeth out of those gums!  This is a common sight around our house these days.

Sierra sharing her toys with Maelle and Jonas

Tante Andréanne dropped in for a quick visit before heading to the ski hill.

Max and Sierra are pretty close to tearing up and down the driveway on their cars.

I’m assuming this will be the photo we show at their wedding.  I love how Sierra was basically offering up kisses to grab his phone.

Here’s a photo from my walk at lunchtime.  Look at all that ice!

Sierra is starting early training for the Vanier wrestling league!  Check out that eye gouge!

She is pretty steady on her cars so far but she can’t figure out how to move forward yet.

Sierra and everyone else in the world cannot wait for Spring to arrive!

My lovely wife.

My lovely wife.

Just like that, she’s 10 months old!

My parents came down for a visit as they tend to do when they are fed up with the snow up North.  Generally when they come, they plant the seed of ‘Hey, we should help renovate something in your house when we are there.”  I have to say I appreciate this because a) I appreciate their help b) it kicks me in the ass to actually get something done with the house c) it’s a little bit harder to get things done with a baby around the house!  I have these grand plans to get the rest of the renovations done before Sierra is fully mobile.  However, maybe that’s a little too ambitious!  There goes my plans for a new ceiling in the rec room again.  SPEAKING of the rec room ceiling, I thought that was the project of 2017 until my parents and Vero conspired against me and decided that the downstairs bathroom needed to be updated.  Let’s be honest here, the only thing really wrong with the bathroom downstairs was that the shower faucet sucked and that the hot and cold were reverse.  So guests were not feeling welcome.  Perhaps that was the point all along?  Mwahaha.  So the bathroom was the first renovation project of 2017.

I had ripped out the old shower to make way for a new one.  Unfortunately for us, the shower base was warped so we had to exchange it.  Kind of a pain, but at least we didn’t have to return the entire shower.  I had to borrow Rob’s truck to get that item (thanks Rob!)

The foreman inspecting our work.

Note the standard 5 ounces of wine that Dad was drinking.  We were having a good laugh at how my Fitbit app says a standard glass of wine was five ounces and we probably tripled that.

Dad teaching Sierra how to play cards.  I will finally have someone in the house that likes to play cards with me!

Intense game of cribbage.

This was not our best work.  We were putting the wainscotting up and realized around this point that there was a certain way you had to insert the groove into the other plank of wood.  So basically, we had to tear our work down and start again.  THEN we were half way done the wall again when I realized Dad wasn’t paying attention and had put the wainscotting up wrong AGAIN!  So basically we worked on this wall triple the amount of time that we should.  Clearly we are new to the job.

Pass me another piece.

This photo has me smiling in it.  It must have been taken BEFORE my dad had put a board with a nail in it on the floor in which I proceed to step onto!  Ouch!  It actually sounds way worse than it was….I pulled the board out and didn’t even see any blood on my foot.  It must have just grazed the skin.  I didn’t let Dad forget about it though.

This is a very typical photo of the entire week…Dad just overseeing the operation!

I can’t tell if Mom is smiling or not in this photo.  She had a rough morning on one of the days…in the span of 30 minutes she managed to drop a door and make a dent in it, drop her eyeglasses into a gallon of paint and then somehow get a paint roller stuck on her boob!  Dad had to help her take it off! 

Mom testing out the installation.

Mom and Vero went to the Rideau Carleton slot machines for a Saturday evening while Dad and I sat around and chatted.  I was in bed when they arrived home and Vero got me up to hear some news.  Mom showered us with $200 in twenty dollar bills.  Quite the win!

But then the real news came in the form of a cheque that she passed to Dad.  “Five thousand dollars!” we heard Dad proclaim!  What a great jackpot!  Mom and Vero said that the machine just kept ringing for 15 minutes and people all around were coming to congratulate Mom.  My favourite part about this story is when they asked if she wanted it in cash.  Thinking she would get mugged on the way out, Mom wisely asked for a cheque!

It’s always great seeing my parents come down for a visit and I’m glad we got to spend some time with them.  Until the next visit!

Hey ho!  Let’s go!

Another month has crawled by (ha!  I just caught that pun).  I feel that February has been the month of the deep winter slumber.  Every night when Sierra would go to bed, I didn’t even want to watch much TV.  I just wanted to curl up and read a book.  I am feeling that spring is in the air so I’m coming out of that funk.

But who can really be in a funk when you have Sierra crawling around the house all the time!  It is exciting times for the family and also a little stressful as the 12 month mark approaches and we are looking for daycare.  Sierra is still babbling away and has a good hearty laugh when you fan her face during a diaper change, or when the kiss monster (aka Maman) appears.  She is also starting to pull herself up whenever she can which is the precursor to madness, I’m sure.

Onto the photos!

Sierra sure loves her mom’s dog slipper.  Actually, she is quite intrigued in dogs.  We were over at Rob and Jan’s place the other day and she couldn’t really figure out what the heck the dog was.

Sometimes I only see these photos as I am posting them and have to come up with the story behind them.  This photo was taken before an epic snowball fight started between mother and daughter.  This was Vero’s starting shot.

Then Sierra retaliated.  Good shot!

No love lost after a snowball fight.

Two teeth!

Wow, I have no idea where this photo was taken!  This looks like a suspect high school locker room.  Sierra has some wild adventures during the day!  Actually, this is probably the locker room at the swimming pool.  Sierra supposedly quite enjoyed it!

Start them young.

I can’t actually tell if she likes this goop or not.

We went out to the Vars carnival which very cool.  There was a great spaghetti supper at the school and then we trekked over to the park for a bonfire and FREE beavertails!  Unheard of!  What a great community we live in.  There were a lot of kids running around having a good time.  It wasn’t too cold out either so we managed to stay for an hour before Sierra had to go home and be fed.

Baby strollers and bonfires.

Check out this Beavertail on a STICK!  This was a great idea.

Here is her favourite spot in the house under the coffee table.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Vero begged me for a new background on her cellphone.  I put this on it.  Damn.  I look good.

Max dropped by with an 1/8 of a cow we had purchased.  Thanks dude!  Sierra and him played along quite well.  Too bad I don’t have a good photo of the two of them.  Maybe Mike does?

Model fathers.

I love how I just noticed that Sierra is pushing the doll around the house!  Driving Miss Daisy!

We figured we had another 15 years until she started driving.

Sierra got her very own transmogrifier!!!

Oh, Calvin and Hobbes, how I love thee.