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It’s just over 5 months now since Ben abruptly turned our lives upside down. It’s incredible how fast he’s grown. At birth he was only 49cm long, but now, he’s over 61cm or just over 2 feet tall!! He was 7lbs 12oz at birth, now he’s almost 20lbs!! In a short span of a half a year, he’s almost tripled in size (weight wise).

He’s starting to use his legs a lot more. We can hold him up lightly while he stands. He hasn’t mastered the crawling yet, but he’s learned to throw himself in the direction of his favorite toy and then roll over to it. He’s also getting better at rotating in a circle on his belly, again to manuveur towards his toys. Reminds me of our breakdance years way back in the 80’s. Now if we can only get the toys out of his mouth once he gets to it.

That got us thinking today that he might be teething. So, upon closer inspection, Sheila found a teeth protruding from his lower front!! THAT’S OUR BOY!! Some of the documentation we’ve been reading about teething have said that it can be accompanied by a fever, but it can also be attributed to the fact that our fricken condo has NO AIR CONDITIONING!!  It’s busted…waiting on a part! Right! It just happens to break down on the hottest day of the year. Hopefully we get it fixed tomorrow. In the meantime, we have to start caring for his tooth!

An aside: Today, 2 big stars died, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson! Ed McMahon died 3 days ago. Maybe it’s not a good week to be in Los Angeles.

Here a link to each of their homepages: Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, and Ed McMahon

I figured not that many people read this blog. What’s even weirder is that those who occasionally do, want to know what’s up with Dog Girl. So, here’ the latest on the last few sightings on DG:

Last week, I went next door to the Metro to pick up some groceries late in the evening. On my way back to the condo, I see her and her two “chunkies” doing their business in the little parkette next to us. She sees me walking towards them and proceeds to walk back towards the condo as well. Her pace a little more hurried than usual. We both arrive at the front door and I politely hold the door open for the chunkies. Like all other situational run-ins with DG, the elevator takes an exceptionally long time to do anything. This time, it was to arrive on the ground floor to pick us up. Usually, it’s a 30 second wait; this time, it was over 2 minutes! I’m getting to think the elevators don’t like DG either!

When Elevator 3 arrives, we all hop in like the Brady Bunch on a road trip to the Grand Canyon…parents begrudgingly, kids (in this case, the chunkies) happily! Wait! There’s residue in the elevator floor! Can it be? Is it? DG and I both focus on what looks like food on the floor. Remnants of potato chips! DG asks me, “Are those chips?”. I step in closer for another look. “Ya, I think so” was all I can mumble back. “Dogs will eat anything!” she says. All I do is nod. What I should have said was, “Yes, as evident from your fat dogs!”, but I bit my tongue and just nodded. “Good night” was her last remark after another long excruciating ride up the elevator. “Night”. I just know one day I’m going to bark out “Night, Dog Girl”.

A few days later, I see her in the elevator again with this funky contraption in her arms. IT WAS A FOLDUP BIKE! Who owns a foldup bike? We say nothing to each other. Maybe because the “chunkies” weren’t around to cut the tension in the elevator. As we exit the elevator, the bike unfolds like it’s a Transformer!! MAYBE IT’S A REAL TRANSFORMER!!? That would be cool; I’d have way more respect for her…although, I have no real reason to not respect her. But, if that bike was a real Transformer, like in the movies, she’d rank up there as one of the coolest girls. Wonder if she has a cape?

She rides off into the cityscape….

Here’s the link to the official Transformers Movie Website

A year ago, if you asked me that I would celebrate my first Father’s Day next year, I wouldn’t have been surprised. Sheila was 2 months pregnant, and looking fabulous! If you told me 2 years ago, I would have thought you were crazy! Sheila and I were going strong, but the relationship was still new. She was still trying to figure out when and if my cockiness will ever fade away. It’s 2 years later and my cockiness is, let’s say, “tamed”. Hey, you can’t erase a lifetime of “vertically challenged” pokes overnight 8-(

But, on Sunday June 21, 2009, I celebrated my first Father’s Day! I’m not big on “marketing” days (Valentines, Easter, Ground Hog, Yom Kapur, etc). Lucky for me, neither is Sheila. Every day is Father’s Day for me! So, when Sheila asked me what I wanted for F.D., all I said was I wanted to see Ben in a “I love Daddy” t-shirt. Well, I woke up and stumbled to the washroom. Spent my usual amount of time on the toilet “thinking”. I stumbled back to bed, and there was Ben, WIDE AWAKE AT 6:30AM! IN A “I LOVE DADDY” T-SHIRT!! It brought tears to my eyes Sheila’s FD mission accomplished.

What I didn’t know was Ben also had a one-sie under the t-shirt that also said “My Dad is Rad!”. He’s so right!! (more tears where drawn to my ocular ducts)…

The rest of the day, we spent up in Markham with my family. I spent some quality time with the boy, did some work on my deck, and then went to the driving range with Ben and Sheila before settling down to dinner with the family. All-in-all, a fantastic day! Weather was a comfortable 23 degrees and sunny!  Next year, hopefully Ben’s ready for a morning 5K jog!

Last night I had the opportunity to “practice” with the coach of the Toronto Raptors. Jay Triano, who I referred to as “coach” by the end of the evening, was taller than expected and a pretty down to earth guy. He even joked about one of his daughters doing drugs; maybe it wasn’t a joke. Coach and the team trainer ran the 20 of us through basketball drills for about 40 minutes. The bunch of us play basketball on Tuesdays in a public school gym. What’s different about a public school size gym and the NBA size basketball court is the NBA court is almost double in size! So, dribbling down the court on the Raptors’ practice court at the ACC (it’s a replica of the actual floor they play on) seems like running a marathon. It was endless dribbling!!

The pros make it look so small. But when you’re 6′9″ tall, everything under your feet looks smaller. So, what would normally seem like a fast break on our regular Tuesday night, turned into broken up plays, and tired players who, by the time they sprinted to half court, was tired enough to have the opposing team make it back on defence. None-the-less, it was an amazing experience!

On Sheila’s birthday, I planned a day excursion to the Elora Gorge in Elora, Ontario. I’ve been there once when I was in university, but that was like 18 years ago; let me repeat that, 18 YEARS AGO!! Wow! How time flies! As part of the road trip, I threw in a geocache hunt.  I discovered geocaches a few years ago while on a hike through the Highlands in Cape Breton.  Basically its a treasure hunt for people who have a GPS and have no real use for one. There’s a community online that basically hides these tin boxes with a log book and a few trinkets. If you find a geocache (based on the GPS coordinates posted online), you sign the log book. If you take something from the box, you leave something. It’s that simple.

So, I went online (http://www.geocaching.com) to see if someone had hid a geocache in Elora. There are several listed in the area, so I picked one that sounded interesting. Most of the caches are hidden in picturesque areas, but mainly out of sight, so there is some work needed to look for them.

After spending a day hiking the 3.5Km Elora Gorge, and driving around the “tri-city” (Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge), we set off to find this cache with the coordinates plugged into our GPS. Sometimes I quite wary about where a GPS takes me, mainly because I’m completely reliant on the technology to guide me without me knowing how to get home if the technology dies. So, the GPS leads me down a residential street in Elora. It tells me to take a left ONTO A STREET THAT DOESN’T EXISTS! Damn! So, I decide to loop around, but the GPS goes a little wonky. But, as I approach what supposedly is the “street” between 2 houses, turns out to be a walkway leading to a bridge over a river. I guess the GPS was right (except that there’s no street).

We get out of the truck with details in hand. It says, “it’s by a multi-root tree”. Well, there were many “multi-root trees”. Unfortunately, after about 25 minutes of searching the trees, we couldn’t find it. Into the truck we go. BUT WAIT! Ben needed to be fed, so I made another attempt, but this time, I crossed the bridge and searched the ruins of a dam to see if there were any thing over there. After about another 15 minutes, the search came up empty. Ben was getting restless. It was a cue to move on.

First geocache with Ben, unsuccessful. Ce la vie! There’s thousands more in the world!

Here are some links:

The Official Global GPS Cache Hunt Site:  http://www.geocaching.com

Elora Gorge:  The Grand River Conservation Area

I’m no environmentalist. I drive a SUV (1999 Jimmy), truly a gas guzzler. I drive 40Km to work, outside the accepted boundaries for the “greens”. I eat lots of meat, I rarely buy local and my love for wine does not include those from Niagara. But, I do recycle religiously where possible, I turn off lights I don’t use and I try to limit my showers to under 5 mins, even though we don’t have a water efficient shower head.

One thing I would love to do is to walk to work, but 40Km would take me 5 hours…and that’s just getting to work. Not really practical. So, it excites me when I’m on course and the training centre is within walking distance. I don’t have to get up as early, and the morning walk is exhilarating…even in the winter. This week I’m on course. It’s about a 20 minute walk up to Yonge and Bloor.

Today was a cool day. This morning was a chilly 12 degrees, so I had to put a long sleeve shirt on. I normally wear my blackberry on my belt loop (not a fan of clipping it on my waist line). Sometime, the “bb” lifts my shirt. So today, I start my morning journey up Bay St. towards Bloor. I walk briskly because I’m running a few minutes late. I’ve got ColdPlay blaring on my iPod. As I’m walking, I people watch. Half way up Bay St., I notice a woman walking towards me on her iPod grinning. I wonder what she’s listening that’s so funny. Another woman a few feet behind her is also grinning and listening to her iPod. I wonder is they’re both listening to the same thing. Not likely. iPods don’t have radio. Then the horrible thought came to me!! MY FLY MIGHT BE DOWN!!

A third woman, walking pass me a few seconds later, confirms it. I don’t actually know for sure, but the odds of 3 women grinning as they walk pass me is pretty high. Most don’t even look at me unless Ben’s strapped to my chest. At the closest stop light, I gingerly reach down to check. SURE ENOUGH, IT’S A GAPING HOLE DOWN THERE! How embarassing? Lucky for me, Bay street wasn’t that busy. Let’s hope I don’t see the same ladies tomorrow

It was a matter of time before it happened. We saw it coming. His right leg, with bent knee, would push up while he’s lying down. His other leg, acting as a pivot peg. It was as if Ben was doing butt lifts in an aerobics class. He’d do about 5 or 6 six of them before he’d give up in frustration. So impatient! All the while, his parents cheering him on on the sidelines “You can do it, Ben!”

Then, the other day (Thursday, June 4th), I got a call at the office. Sheila said he finally did it. She was washing dishes in the kitchen. One moment Ben’s on his back on the floor, the next moment, he flipped over! A NEW ERA HAS BEGUN! Changing him on the change pad will never be the same again Ever since that day, he’s been doing the Chubby-Checker twist every time I change him. What’s weird is he doesn’t like being on his belly. And once he rolls over, he doesn’t know what to do with himself. But like everything else so far, Ben seems to figure it out himself.

Weight update: he’s officially over 18lbs 6oz! The little “hulkster” is ready for solids. We plan to feed him organic rice cereal (I know, he’s chinese, what else would we feed him other than rice) this week. Cross our fingers!

It’s incredible how in such a short time Ben has developed his own personality…or should we say “mimic one of his parent’s personality”. I can see that Ben’s not too patient with figuring out new toys. He’s pretty much the baby that wants “it out of the box and working!”. No figuring out how to turn it on, or which buttons to push to make lights glow, or which limb on the funny looking animal to squeeze to make it sing. HE JUST WANTS IT TO DO IT ALL, ALL BY ITSELF! Any deviation from that and the arms begin to flail and the high-pitch scream starts to emanate from his pouty mouth…although, the flailing arms is kind of cute…the screaming…not so.

Ben has had the luxury of being showered with toys. His parents have not been so lucky to receive toys for Ben that are quiet. Here’s a conspiracy theory: my family (in particular, my sisters) are joining forces to buy as many NOISY TOYS for Ben as possible to drive me crazy. Let me tell you, it’s not working! The more noise the toys make, the less I have to say the words “goo-goo, gaa-gaa”. Ben now expects a noisy toy, so anything else would warrant the above mentioned high-pitch scream. So, I would like to thank my family for purchasing these toys for Ben (just stay away from those sing-a-song balloons…they drive me crazy!)