Visit with the Kelly's

After having fun being snowed in with the Halifax gang we briefly went back to St-Ignace to recuperate and then we were off again to Fredricton to see my cousin Crystal and the family; Joey, Taryn and Olivia. They recently moved there and are liking it very much. They were all very happy to meet Béla who was very happy to play with the girls. Here are Taryn and Béla sitting with me on the couch.

We read some books and played hide and seek and the sleeping game where Taryn puts me to bed and tells me to sleep. Here I am reading 'Dr Seuss's ABC' which Joey noticed was the abridged version. 

And Crystal was very happy to hold Béla and play with him for the first time.

And here is Taryn and me making faces at the Camera. Béla was being to cool to participate. 

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The next day we drove back to St-Ignace . 

New Year's Eve in Halifax

After a couple of days in New Brunswick, we were headed to Halifax, for a New Year's Eve party at the apartment of Marie and Lynn. The party was fabulous, including a trivia contest which we won, earning us the fabulous top prize of a ShamWow (they're made in Germany, you know). We got to see lots of friends from Halifax too, and Béla seemed to have a good time too. Alas, we neglected to take a single picture at the party itself.

The next day Jer's dad called, to ask if we were planning on driving back early (we'd hoped to spend a couple of days), as a giant winter storm was en route to New Brunswick. Jer's sister Marlène had come with us, and had to be back at work in Moncton on Monday, so she got a ride back with Marie's cousin Veronica, while we opted to wait it out, and hope the storm wasn't too bad.

On the 1st we headed with Marie and Lynn down the road to Rishad and Anjulee's new place, where we had a look around, and hung out for a little while.

At this point we were all pretty hungry, in a slightly hung-over sleep deprived way (despite the excellent brunch they put out for us that morning), so we went out for fantastic Chinese food on Quinpool. In this picture it looks like I'm the only one eating, but it's just because everyone else had finished that course and left me some while I was feeding Béla (who's sleeping under that receiving blanket in front of me).

We decided to rent some movies and have a quiet night in at Rishad's place, so while some people went to get some videos, Jer and I headed back, to minimize the time that Béla was out in the blizzard. Yup, Paul was right, it was a pretty good storm, and I'm glad we weren't driving that day.

Upon getting back to Rishad's, I found that Béla was rather enjoying my new sweater (a Christmas gift from Jeremi), as the front pocket made for convenient handles for him while in the carrier. It was pretty cute.

We all stayed over at Rishad's to avoid walking home in all the snow, and headed out the next morning (Saturday) to the weekly market. We were a bit late getting there, and some of the vendors were still on Christmas break (alas, no sweet sushi rolls), but it was still good to go down there. We picked up some nice root vegetables for a big winter stew for that evening, and then headed to the Henry House, a nearby pub, for the afternoon. This was a bar where we'd ended up the first Saturday after the giant blizzard when we lived in Halifax (aka White Juan), as it was one of the only things open after we'd hiked across town in the mistaken hope that the market might be open, and we'd had great fun drinking away the afternoon while playing cards. This afternoon was a much tamer version of that, with somewhat less drinking and considerably more eating, and definitely more baby.

Not to worry, he napped fine on the pub bench while I played cards.

The next day was Sunday, and we'd considered driving back that day, but the storm was pretty much just rotating over New Brunswick still, so we ended up staying until Monday morning, when we finally headed back. It was great to see everyone, and we much appreciated the hospitality during our extended visit! Here's Béla, all packed up for the trip home, in one of his two Team Canada Olympic outfits. (He got one in red from my parents, and one in black from Aunt Connie and Uncle Ray out in Vancouver. He's so well kitted out now for cheering on our athletes from afar!)

Christmas at the Thebeaus

After a two hour flight from Toronto to Moncton that Béla did not overly appreciate, my siblings Marlène and Nicolas, who had flown in the day before, met us at the airport. They were waiting for us at the luggage carousel and trying to recapture Béla's arrival to Canada with the with the video camera my family got us for Christmas. The original take of this was to be when Béla actually first arrived in Canada in Toronto, but was foiled by some technical problems explained in previous post). Then we jumped in the car and headed for downtown St-Ignace (there is no downtown St-Ignace... there is no town of St-Ignace).

A big family supper was waiting for us when we arrived with pâté (meat pie, including deer meat) and a big Capon with fixings of course.

Here's Béla, tired after his long trip.

And here he is catching up with my dad.

And here he is being my hat (aka "chapeau Thébeau").


The next day we had a big open house at my parents so family and friends could drop by and meet Béla (if he was so inclined as to be awake). A ton of people stopped by. This made it a lot easier for us to see everybody. Thanks to everybody that could come.

Here are my aunts Diana and Emilia with most of my immediate family.

Here are my parents good friends Onil and Hugette playing with Béla.

My uncle Gene and Grace and Josh.

Later on there were mussels.



And here are Grammy and Béla opening some presents. A nice blue knit tuque and christmas bib ...

 

and a Bertrand/Clifford book from aunt Joan.

Here's what Grammy got for Béla. She commissioned a beautiful quilt for him! It's really nice. We're thinking of painting what will eventually be his room to match.



And this is what we gave Grammy: a fancy tea and saucer set from the Erzgebirge, a region known for there high end craftiness.

Here are my cousin David's wife, Jennifer, and kids, Zachary and William.

Aunt Helen with William and me with Béla.

A big hug from Zach.

Last year we got our fathers Feuerzangenbowle punch bowls. Feuerzangenbowle is basically a German wine-rum-punch made by lighting a high proof rum doused sugar 'hat' (solid cone of white sugar) above the bowl and letting it caramelize and fall in. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any high proof rum sold in New Brunswick or none that will burn properly. So this Christmas we got my dad high proof rum from Germany that's made just for this purpose.

Also, the bowl broke in transit last year, which is why we're using a pot. I'm not sure if it is lit in this picture (it went out a few times) but you can see that the sugar has started to melt and caramelize.

After second Christmas it was time for New Years (next post).

Béla's second professional photo shoot!

Just a short post with a few excerpts from Béla's second professional photo shoot. Chris and Karen had the brilliant idea to get photos done over the holidays while everyone was together, all four generations in one place at one time, and had Sandra Strangemore, who also did their wedding pictures, come up for a photo shoot. I'm not putting the photos right in the blog, but have linked to the pictures on her page. You'll just have to click through the words that are underlined if you'd like to see them.

Here's a picture of just the three of us, our first real family portrait. Of course Béla is the star, as he should be. And we got the whole bunch of us all together too, of course, as that was the whole idea. Here's the best one from the series that she took. By the time we got around to doing just the Bazar side of the family, Béla decided that he was finished with this, and was going to sleep, and would not wake up for anything. And so we got this picture.

After that we took off, as we were having brunch with Melanie and Ruthanne, but everyone else stuck around for more pictures, especially with new baby Gavin. There were lots of truly beautiful pictures (like this one, or this one), but much more entertaining is this one, with Gavin peeing on my brother, and the whole arc of urine captured in mid-stream.

Christmas with the Marshalls

Finally, we're getting around to blogging about our Christmas holidays. Yes, it's February already, but we didn't get around to doing it while in Canada, and January (and early February) disappeared in a series of illnesses (first Jer, then Béla, then me), but I'm getting ahead of myself.

First we had to get to Canada. Here we are on the train heading to Frankfurt, which was by far the most pleasant part of our journey. I realize that his hat looks too small, but it's since stretched out a bit, and should fit him for a little while longer. It was a gift from our friend Grit, and I was determined that he should be able to wear a stretchy hat for a one year-old, but his noggin really is huge. The brim is supposed to be folded up, but that's never going to happen with this one.

How was the plane trip, you ask? Good in the sense that the plane arrived close to on schedule without crashing, bad in the sense that his ears caused him such torture that he wasn't able to breastfeed, as the pain of sucking was too much. And so he was hungry and in pain. Oh, and Jeremi and I were seated two rows apart. So yeah, it sucked. (Eventually I realized that he could drink from a bottle, as he didn't have to suck as hard, and I was able to manually express enormous quantities of milk in the airplane bathroom while Jer held the screaming baby, which made the rest of the trip more bearable. But you get the general idea, right?) And yes, I know that you're supposed to nurse the baby on take-off (even when the flight attendant tells you to hold him in the burp position, facing over your shoulder), but the plane left over an hour late, and all my excellent attempts to time his hunger for take-off were for naught. And he just won't eat when he's not hungry...

Anyhow, we made it there, and were met at the airport by not only my parents, but also Nick and Cathy, who were very eager to meet their new nephew, but also wanted to present us with the gift from the Thébeau side of the family, a video camera! They'd wrapped the box, but had the camera out so they could record Béla arriving in Canada, but unfortunately there was a problem with the camera they bought, and it couldn't access the hard drive, so it could only store a few seconds of video. They were able to return it for one that worked properly, but, alas, there is no video of the arrival in Canada.

We arrived early in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, went to my parents' place to get settled, and then headed over to Chris and Karen's for Christmas Eve dinner, tourtière. Normally Christmas Eve is spent attending various church services, but I'd already said that we wouldn't go with an infant with jetlag, and Chris and Karen definitely weren't going with a three day-old baby (oh yeah, did I mention that my nephew Gavin was born on the 21st, just in time for us to meet him?), so my mom skipped out on the choir, and we had a relaxing evening catching up. So relaxing, in fact, that we neglected to take any pictures. (This happened often throughout the holidays - it seems I'm making up for it with long-winded prose.)

Then finally, it was Christmas morning!!! We got to dress Béla in his little Christmas sleeper with matching tuque, which magically still fit him. Here he is trying out the exersaucer for the first time. (It was a success, I'd say, though not so much that I ran out and bought one. We're pretty low-tech when it comes to baby toys, but he got to try out all the fancy ones while in Canada.)

Chris, Karen, Owen, and Gavin all came over for breakfast, so we could open our stockings over a big breakfast. Despite our worst fears, Béla adapted to the time different with no trouble at all, sleeping in until 7:30 or so the first day. (I was afraid that Christmas might start at 2:00 am for us...) Here's Owen, having some breakfast.

Little Gavin had a Christmas sleeper on as well, and had his very own stocking. My mom got us all new stockings this year, so that they all matched. And yes, she bought a spare (or two?), in the hopes of future grandchildren.

Hanging out after breakfast with Karen, Owen, and my new nephew. After getting used to Béla, it was as if Gavin weighed nothing. Of course he's not really so light, but Béla was already twice as heavy as he was when he was born.

Béla and his uncle Chris, practicing standing up...

Then we headed over to Chris and Karen's, where we were going to open the presents and have Christmas dinner. Their house has an enormous foyer which is two storeys high, so of course they had to buy an enormous Christmas tree to fill it, which was about four meters tall. Here Jeremi and Béla are standing next to it for scale.

Béla loved opening presents, which mostly involved him grabbing on to a piece of paper, while one of us turned the present around, pulling it away from him, until it was unwrapped.

Getting a very classic baby toy...

...playing with a tambourine that my mom got when the Olympic torch went through Newmarket.

Here he was trying out one of the fancy bells-and-whistles (and-mobile-and-music-and-two-axis-rocking-motion) swings, which failed to lull him to sleep. To be honest, I think he might have been overstimulated. (Speaking of overstimulation, he got to see TV for the first time (that is, TV that's not playing on a laptop), and it was giant flat-screen HDTV at that. He stared, slack-jawed, at the wall of moving light and sound. I also got to see HDTV for the first time, when Karen put on Cars (which I hadn't seen), and I found myself totally overstimulated. Looks like we're sticking to laptop screens for now.

Where the magical swing failed, the cocoon-a-baby saved the day yet again. (He really is asleep with his hands over his eyes like that.)

The big gift that we got for each set of grandparents this year was a photobook of Béla's first 100 days (like how they rate presidents after 100 days, plus it was about when we could get it printed and shipped to us in time before we left). It was a big hit with both sides of the family. Here mom and dad are looking through it, and crying.

The big present for Owen this year was a play kitchen, which was saved for the end. He LOVED it!

After opening the gifts, there was lots of time for sitting around and hanging out. Here's my baba with her new great-grandson. (My mom has now become Baba, and my baba now goes by the questionable title of Baba-baba. She'll always be Baba to not only me, but all of my friends.)

And here are four generations of us, all hanging out on the couch.

And then he was asleep again, with his hands over his eyes. I know that this looks an awful lot like the last picture, but isn't it cute? Besides, it's a good picture of the reindeer-on-skates sleeper.

Here Gavin was having a little sleep on my nap. We brought him his very own Cocoon-a-baby for Christmas, which was very much appreciated.

Nick and Kathy came for Christmas supper as well, as they live nearby, and Kathy's family was all away for the holidays. Here they're checking out the photobook of Béla, while getting some quality baby-holding time in.

And of course big brother Owen (who was almost three) was practicing holding his new baby brother.

Over the next few days we got to see a lot of people, not least my Uncle Bernie, Aunt Joan, cousin Vanessa and her husband Joey, all from Kitchener-Waterloo, who came by to see all the new arrivals. We also went to Melanie and Ruthanne's for brunch, and had a chance to visit with Ezra as well. Also, Gloria, who was supposed to be there for Christmas, but ended up in the hospital on Christmas Day, came up to see us. Alas, we didn't manage to take pictures of any of that. We do have a couple more pictures from our first stint in Ontario though, which are just of Béla being cute while playing with his dad. They don't really add to the holiday narrative, but it's our blog, so we're allowed to post them all the same.

How cute is he?!?