BABY PROOF

Oh that's right...we still have some baby proofing to finish up around the house. 

BABY TALK

Not only are you learning new words these days, but so are your parents.  The world according to AJ...

Nana...banana.  Dir-die...dirty diaper.  Baba...bottle.  Num-num...food.  Your dad and I swore up and down that we would never baby talk to you, coming up with "baby" names for things.  Or that we would ever use that high-pitched, overly-friendly baby tone when talking to you either.  For now we've been able to avoid that baby tone, but it looks as though we've been drawn into the world of baby talk. 

GROSSER THAN GROSS

There's many reasons why men are supposed to leave the toilet seat down. This is just one of them.  

INITIATION

Today was a big day for us.  We entered a rite of passage all families go through...our first kiddie birthday party.  You could almost say it was an initiation of sorts.  Screaming kids, big toy structures, pizza, bright colors, sugar highs, presents, and even more screaming kids.  These are the basic ingredients to a kiddie birthday party.  It left me scrambling for the Excedrin as soon as we got home. 

Along with Cousin Lia, you helped Joseph celebrate his fourth birthday at Safari Sam's.  When you weren't trying to run behind the pizza counter or getting in the way of big kids, you were having a ball being entertained by Isabel and Lia. 

The highlight of Joseph's birthday?  It wasn't the ear-to-ear grins or shrieking laughs as you slid down the slide or climbed up and down the big blocks.  It was seeing Joseph's dad come out in a Batman costume, to surprise Joseph with a special guest appearance from the one-and-only "Batman".  Now that's true love.  I guess we'll see just how much your dad claims to love you by whether or not he too dresses up as cartoon characters for your future birthday parties. 

40 WINKS

My daily tall, nonfat, no foam, with whip latte from Starbucks isn't cutting it for me today. 3.5 hours of sleep probably didn't help the situation either. For as big as a king size bed is, one would think there would be plenty of room for two adults and a baby. Apparently there isn't because you spent the entire night rolling around kicking  and crowding up into me. At one point you even nestled up onto my head, just like a cat. It's probably time to talk to your dad about making you stay in the crib the whole night.  This part-time deal just isn't working for some of us. 

BUTCHART GARDENS

No trip to Victoria would be complete without a visit to the famed Butchart Gardens.  It was a drizzly day and you almost had to spend the entire visit encapsulated in your stroller, akin to the Bubble Boy.  Yes, that's you getting your picture taken with me. 

Luckily it cleared up enough where we could free you from your bubble.  What usually takes 3-4 hours to completely take in the entire gardens, took us about 1 hour.  As magnificent as the gardens were, your dad and I were more entertained by the crowds of people "oohing" and "ahhing" over the plants and flowers, than the actual gardens itself.   

TEA PARTY

What would a stay at The Empress be without a tea party?  As a father to a girl, this undoubtedly will be the first of many tea parties for your dad.  Lucky him. 

THE EMPRESS

The Empress Hotel is one of the oldest and most iconic hotels in Victoria, BC.  It's played hostess to kings, queens, famous celebrities, and now you.

Your dad and I were appalled to find out that the windows in our 5th floor harborside room opened up completely to the outside and had no safety screens.  How could the hotel get away with this?  And how many people have fallen through these windows?  We then had to remind ourselves that we were in a foreign country.  And in a foreign country, they have their own standards.  If Canada can actually be counted as a foreign country. 

VICTORIA

Here's another vacation that you'll never remember... Victoria, BC.  We took a ferry over to the island and spent Labor Day weekend doing all the requisite activities of Victoria.   

While in Victoria we noticed that there were an unusually large number of senior citizen tourists.  Old people everywhere.  Everywhere.  It was the senior citizen equivalent to college kids in Cancun on spring break.  As nice as Victoria was, it's safe to say that your dad and I won't be going back until we too, are in our 60's. 

LEFT COAST BESTIE

Whether you like it or not, you've been designated as Anna's left coast bestie.  For Anna's first of hopefully many trips out to Portland, you were quite the little hostess... 

You let Anna push you around the house. 

You shared your toys with Anna. 

And this is what you got in return from Anna...

SINGLE DAD

While Anna's mother and your mother were running "the mother of all relays," other wise known as Hood to Coast, Anna's dad and your dad got to live the lives of single parents for 36 hours.  And by the sounds of it, 36 hours was more than enough time for your dad to realize that he never wants to be a single parent.

As Heidi and I covered 197 blister-enducing, toenail losing  miles from Mt. Hood to Seaside, Joe and your dad dealt with dirty diapers, messy meals, and temper tantrums.  It's hard to say who had it worse. 

When you four finally arrived to Seaside, we realized that the dads had forgotten to pack Anna's food for the weekend.  Yet, they remembered to pack all of their beer, wine, liquor, and mixers.  Why am I not surprised by this?

CHATTER BOX

You're quite the little chatter box for a 10.5 month old. Besides your usual baby babble, you're now finally starting to say some things that make sense to the rest of the world. Your words of choice these days? Dada, dog, up, hi, and uh-oh.

And my favorite word that you've incorporated into your lineup? Mama. MAMA!  After patiently waiting all these months, it's finally back!  Although I'm pretty sure you had no other choice than to pull this word out of hiding when your dad went away on a business trip and you were stuck with nobody else but me. It's nice to know you've been paying attention to who I am.

CRABS

How many people can say that they caught crabs?  Crabs?  One day you'll get the chance to.  In the meantime you get to watch other people, like your dad, catch crabs.  Near the end of every summer we go on a big crabbing trip for the day with a bunch of friends.  Beer, sun, beach, fresh seafood and good friends...it doesn't get much bettter than that. 

Although with such a large group, we inevitably wind up eating more hot dogs than crabs.  Which is OK by me, since I'm not a big fan of seafood.  Hopefully you'll enjoy seafood as much as your dad does.