Better Shots From Calaway

BigJonnyG sent me these photos from Calaway Park, which are far better than the ones I took on my phone. This shot of Scotty with his hands in his pockets is now one of my all-time favourites of him.

Scotty saw me putting my hands in my pockets that morning and copied me. We just need to hope that he shows better judgement than I did at his age -- on several occasions I tripped while walking with my hands in my pockets and ended up with quite a number of nosebleeds and other injuries. Yesterday R noticed him doing something else I do -- cracking his toes by crossing the big toe over the index toe. She thought it was cute, and not so immediately dangerous as the pocket-walking.




comments:

margo said...
I love that hands in the pocket shot..he looks like such a tough guy....then you read what's on his shirt. love it.

Grandma Walters said...
Hey, sons copying dads is good in many ways. Also sisters copying sisters. Made "potty training" much easier!!!

the mama said...
I love this picture too ! He reminds me so much of you at that age. Wow--they have really upgraded the rides since the early days of Calaway Park.

JwRiDe said...
i'm with margie...sweet hands-pockets pic

These Mediocre Video Clips Are Not Mine

My friend McBourne was having some trouble embedding YouTube videos into a blog post, so I tested the code he was using on my blog and we worked out the problem. Since I've already gone through the trouble of putting the code in here, I figured I might as well post it and we'll see whose blog gets a larger audience response.

He said that the theme of his post is something about the videos being fairly mediocre and somewhat out of date, but he figured he should post them anyways, rather than letting them slip another few months. I joked that I end up a lot of video clips that are much worse -- the ones where you're trying to take a photo and you've turned the camera sideways for a portrait view and don't realize that you've left it on the video setting. Those videos are usually about 3 seconds long and the script is generally runs something like, "What's going on-- oh, it's on video. Rats."

Anyways, here are his sledding videos from Family Day. Feel free to leave comments.

Boys And Bikes

We had a Saturday practice ride with the Scouts and Ventures to help prepare for our 5-day bike trip this summer. As you can see in the picture, there are lots of bikes and boys of all sizes.



If you look especially closely, you can see one very little boy hovering around his dad's big green bike.



I have pulled him in a trailer a few times and he just loves it. Usually, he's strapped in there comfortably with a drink and some snacks and just sits back and relaxes. You don't even hear a peep out of him, but if I look back at him he just grins at me.

Our Little Six-Footer

We've heard a few times that you can get a decent approximation of a child's future full-grown height by doubling a height measurement taken at 2 years of age. Well, when Scotty turned 2 stood him up next to a tape measure to predict the future. He was just shy of 36 inches -- which is also the minimum height for several rides at the local amusement park.


Based on this crude estimator, Scott will be about 6-feet tall. We've also heard that the best time to measure is actually a bit later than the 24-month mark, so maybe my guess from last year of 6'2" will still hold water. Since Scott is holding pretty steady above the 85th percentile for height, that seems reasonable.


As for weight, Scotty started stepping on the scales with me on a fairly regular basis the last few months and I was surprised to see him pushing into higher percentiles for weight. We thought the weight would be going the other way, since he's been a lot fussier about eating foods lately.

Opening Day at Calaway

We all have season's passes to Calaway Park, the amusement park just west of Calgary, and we hit it on opening day (which also happened to be the only decent day in the May Long Weekend).


Scott had a buddy to accompany him on all the little kiddie rides because we hooked up our neighbours up the street (J&J Whitey), and their little boy B is only a month older than Scotty.


Heritage Park sells $20 tickets for a 20 minute ride aboard a steam train dressed up like Thomas the Tank Engine, which we thought was a little pricey for an experience a 2-year-old might hardly remember. When Scotty spied this little blue train ride at Calaway, he immediately shouted out "There's Thomas!".


I think he probably enjoyed this ride aboard "Thomas" more than he would have appreciated the larger-scale (and more expensive) ride at Heritage Park. He was sad that he had couldn't ride in the lead engine, settling for a lowly passenger car. At least he still has something to look forward to.


At 36 inches high, Scotty was turned away from a few rides for being too short. With his hands tucked into the pockets of his camo pants, I would have thought him too irresistably cute for anyone to turn him away. The shirt says 'I [heart] Mommy'.


Why does the sight of a carousel make me want to sing the song from Teddy Ruxpin?


Although the temperatures were less than sweltering, J and his son G braved the infamous 'log ride' and got fairly soaked just before we called it a day.


It only took us 10 minutes to drive back to our house from the park, so we're planning on hitting it several nights a week over the course of the summer. By the end of the season, we anticipate Scotty will break the 38-inch mark, allowing him to branch out into a few more rides.


Plenty more sunburns to come!

Plumbing Emergencies Are Always On Weekends

See that van out front? That is the plumber coming to our place for an emergency service call because the drains in our basement were backing up.



See that enormous tree? That is the cause of the problem. Apparently, the roots had grown right through the pipe that goes from our house to the street. The plumber was able to use some fancy technology to send a camera down to investigate and send a auger along to bore it out. He also said that we should get it bored out every 2-3 years (and he mentioned that it's close enough to the edge of the property that city might come and do it for free).

That makes me wonder. Will I actually remember to schedule this with the city in 2-3 years, or will I just wait for another weekend emergency?

Happy Mother's Day

On this Mother's Day number three,
We love you, love you, mommy dear.
We shout it on your day in May,
And love you more each passing year.

WE LOVE YOU!
-Scotty and Scotty's Daddy