Holidays
I have a couple of things I’d like to post about, but for now I will start with a recap from the holidays, which were quiet and nice – ie. not too crazy. We didn’t travel too much – ie. we skipped on my family reunions in Beauce this year – and kept to simple and cozy celebrations with my close family and Frank’s relatives in town. Xavier was wonderful throughout, even when we woke him up for a couple of hours in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve to celebrate. But let’s cut to the chase… pictures and video.

We have a full album up of Christmas with my (Émilie’s) family, and Frank’s mom put up her pictures of Christmas with both of Frank’s extended families. The complete albums will be more interesting for relatives, but here are a couple of favourites for everyone:

Xavier learning to unwrap gifts:

Serious negociations between boy and uncle:

Learning guitar:

Xavier’s not the kiss-kiss type:

Merry Xmas:

Little elf:

Most (all) pictures from the holidays with Frank’s family were taken by Frank’s mom and dad, since we were pretty busy filming the event. Frank edited a video of the holidays; it’s a little long, but for interested relatives, you will find it here.

Manon’s birthday

Right after the holidays, we had a family dinner to celebrate my mom’s birthday (Jan.9), and an album of pictures is up for this event as well. Of course, Xavier stole some of the spotlight with his face full of chocolate icing:

I don’t think mom minded, seeing as she was his main provider of cake:

Funny videos

And if you’ve made it this far, well surely you deserve a little treat. Here are two funny videos of (you guessed it) Xavier.

Xavier dancing:

Jumping Xavier (w/Frank) – they’d been at it a while before I started filming, too:

What Xavier is exclaiming during breaks is his version of “encore” (again)…

That concludes our very long post for today. We’ll be back (quicker than last time, surely) with more family news. Meanwhile, please receive our warmest wishes for 2008!

No, we’re not planning on cross-dressing Xavier in the near future… This little dress is destined for his future little sister! Yup, today was the 22 week ultrasound, and the doc believes we’re having a girl.

Even though they can never guarantee and it’s easier to identify correctly a boy – and that missus was quite shy of private parts and kept her legs close to her all through the ultrasound – the doc was confident enough that she was seeing a baby girl. (As a bonus, doctor noted her predictions haven’t turned out wrong so far.) So looks like we’ll be having a “couple” of children, hehe! I allowed myself to shop for some clothing for my future baby girl, including the dress above (which was only available in size 18 months, but oh well… she’ll wear it eventually) and some girlie pieces for newborns.

As for the medical angle, baby 2′s development is very well, she has all her mini-organs and her dimensions are correct. Perfect health, then!

The gynecologist allowed us to videotape the ultrasound (yay!!), and Frank put together the best parts and placed the montage online in our Picasaweb archives. It lasts about 4m30: .

And, to finish off, here are two little shots of our future little princess:

See you soon!

Also, Frank initially uploaded the whole tape’s worth of film by mistake instead of isolating the vacuuming sequence. We’ll probably take it offline in a while to get back some Picasaweb space, but for dedicated Xavier fans, here’s a quarter of an hour enjoyment. Warning: there’s an overly long sequence of Xavier in diaper “dancing” and other endless minutes of Xavier’s face looking at himself through the camera’s LCD screen flipped toward him, while I just won’t stop saying “allô” in the background in the hopes of getting him to say it (you know how it is: we tape 5 minutes to get 15 seconds of what we’re trying to capture, always believing we’ll get a better shot, until we give up and that’s when he does his thing again).

There’s now a small video of Xavier enjoying a dip in his grand-parents’ jacuzzi in our Video Archives in our Picasaweb albums. I’ve also started his July album and created a new album (52 pics!) of our visit to St.Edouard Zoo. It’s not a big exotic zoo – mostly wolves, wildcats and llamas – but it’s close-by and an adequately short trip for two toddlers who won’t notice the difference anyway (we went with Mathieu and Christine with their son Félix, now 14.5 months).

I’ve been quite tired, which has dragged down the number of activities we embarked on during our vacations, but other vacation activities included for me a trip to Ikea and another to see the new Harry Potter movie in Mtrl with Karine – I liked the movie, it was quite better accomplished than the 4th in my opinion, and the adaptation from novel to movie length was no small feat. We also spent a couple days sans Xavier, which were sort of vacation in their own fashion, and finally, yesterday, we all went to the local fair to see yet more farm animals and where Xavier and Félix enjoyed their first rides.

The end of vacation… a year’s worth

Well I wouldn’t call vacation the whole of last year, which was my maternity leave, but it will indeed end tonight, as tomorrow is my first day back at work. I’m not really nervous about it – I went back for half a day already, and it was pretty much like riding a bike. Some staffing changes and office configuration aside, work doesn’t change much. What I’m most concerned with is how tired I’ve been feeling lately, and how that will translate into the busy schedule of workdays and caring for Xavier. I’ll have Wenesdays off with him; I’m not sure those days will be as relaxing as they sound, but at least I’ll get to see my son a little more than 2/7 of a week.

I’m hoping to keep the blog alive even after I’m back at work, but post occurence might slow down.

Our summer feels like it’s ending with vacation time – especially with the grey skies above – but there’s still plenty of stuff to expect, in fact, notably Xavier’s first birthday in two weeks, and the awaited-for-with-trepidation first ultrasound on August 15. I hope everyone is having a good summer so far!

The Zoo St-Édouard’s website

Skipped a couple of great days and activities lately, notably my first Mother’s day – which was great and involved one dinner and two brunches, the gift of a new blanket by Frank and Xavier’s welcome cooperation at the restaurant – Ge and me going to see Shrek III – nice movie, Shrek babies are so cute! – and Ge’s and my trip to Québec city for the third Mommies-babies lunch on Monday – good weather, good hosting by Anne-Marie and good company for an afternoon of baby chatting. I’m making up with pictures and video.

One of the first hot days of the season today, so Xavier and I went playing out and strolled to the park where are the swings. I took care to apply sunblock on his soft skin and made him wear his sunhat. I, well… I pushed aside my sunglasses and put on my new sandals (for the second time, over the first time’s fresh welts), my capris and my neck-tied cami that exposes the most skin – which is stupid, since I have vitiligo. Alas, it seems the increased vulnerability to sunburn and skin cancer does not surpass my will to start the summer with an even tan. [Note: After writing this I did some additionnal research on vitiligo, and found there are different views on its role in cancer risks, some articles even suggesting people with the condition would be less likely to get skin cancer.]

Two summers ago, on our trip to Boston, we spent an afternoon at the beach in Ipswich under a blazing sun. I passed on Frank’s offer to apply sunscreen to my back and proceeded to do it myself instead. If I remember correctly, the dark tan marks of my finger’s outlines were still showing at Christmas.

Today – except for an incident involving carrot puree and the blender – was mostly fun, one of these days when it’s good to be on maternity leave. To prove it, here’s a 15 seconds video of Xavier in the swings (faint of heart, beware of motion sickness!):

For those who don’t feel like video, I also put up some stills in the album (and many other new pictures, including Mother’s day and Romane and Xavier in the car on our trip to Québec city on Monday). The park offers a superb background, and the pictures turned out great:

A good summer to all!

Check the link above for the whole series, but the funniest one, to me, was #3 :