What a great day! Despite both of us being quite out of shape and, as it turned out, not very well prepared (not typical MannAiz attention to detail and planning), we had a great time running the Mitsubishi City Chase Ottawa...sponsored by Blackberry (our cheque better be in the mail!) this past weekend.

This was our first kick at this event and we are already thinking about next year and getting a chance to do things differently.

Check points were scattered across the city and we ended up walking and jogging about 17 km over the course of the day. It took us 4 hours, 40 minutes and we finished 68th out of about 360 teams...not too shabby. We got to hit baseballs at JetForm park, fence a woman from our Olympic team, sing with strangers in a car, take pictures of stranger's tattoos, build an inukshuk, golf with ridiculously oversized golf clubs and walk on stilts on slippery grass.

We can hardly walk two days later but is was great fun. If you get the chance, we highly recommend it!

What a wonderful week and a wonderful wedding. It was great to see how happy Jonathan and Mackenzie looked and it didn't hurt that the sun was shining, the location was spectacular, the day had been planned so well and everyone was in such good spirits.

Congrats again to the happy couple and here's to meeting for their 10th anniversary back in Antigua.

The heat of summer brings many wonderful things and one of best has to be watching Thomas play in his pool and run around the back yard..."Finally, I can be set free after being stuck in the house all winter!" (Thomas really is quite well spoken for a year and a half). This hot, hot Saturday we picked up a great Mr. Potato head garage sale find and, as you can see, Thomas loved it.

Bring on that hot weather.

It has been great to be off work and spending all the time I can with Thomas. I have been trying my best to stop and eat the roses as much as possible, just spending time playing with him and watching him explore the world around him. 3 months goes by in a blink. It has been a month and a half already so I need to make sure to enjoy it.

Amanda and Thomas and I went to Stoney Swamp in the west of Ottawa last week on a glorious sunny day. Thomas' is turning it to quite the outdoorsman, so he was loving the ducks, Canada geese, the chipmunks and red squirrels and even marten swimming around. Today I went again to try to recreate the experience but it just didn't live up to last weeks trip, so I went to Bayshore and let Thomas play in their great play areas...Wadda ya gonna do! Anyway here are a few pics from our Stoney Swamp visit last week.

There has been not nearly enough Tom-Tom time with his granny A, so it was great to have a good visit with Amanda's mum and wonderful to see Thomas smiling, cuddling and enjoy the visit as much as I am sure Amanda's mum did. Here are but a few of the pics from the visit, with a trip to Dow's lake to see the tulips and plenty of time to relax in our back yard. Here is to many more granny visits!

That little man of ours just keeps on truckin'. He has learned to climb the stairs and as soon as he gets the chance he is off to the races...up the stairs. A couple of days ago was also and interesting as he discovered our kitchen stool makes for a fantastic walker...and off he went.

That little guy, so cute!

Thomas has been giving hugs and kisses for a while now (an unbelievably cute thing to witness, I must say) but this is the first captured on video. We especially love the "smack" sound he makes at the end!

There is something simply amazing in the laugh of a baby. When that baby is your, even better!

Thomas obviously thought his first experience with his dad making a popping sound was the funniest thing he ever heard. Daddy couldn't stop making the sound and making Thomas laugh. After several dozen pops dad's mouth and cheeks were quite sore however...but well worth the copious laughs that were generated.

Well by "eats" we mean "gums", and crawling is more like a combat crawl with a lot of pushing of feet and dragging around by the elbows. But it is forward locomotion. Not only is it very entertaining to watch, it also cuts down on the chorus of frustration when a toy is out of reach since he can now get it himself.

"Talking" is a bit of an exaggeration, of course, but what we are hearing is pretty neat nonetheless. A couple of days before TomTom turned seven months old, I said to Jeremy "Hey, isn't Thomas supposed to be making new sounds by now?" (he'd been stuck on Ah-Goo since about 2-3 months). Well the very next day, Thomas' language centre exploded into life. He now has a vast repertoire of sounds, including mamama, dadada, bababa, vavava, blah blah blah, gagaga, ma-ba-da-ga-va-da-ma (etc.) and the occasional mummmmmmaayyyyy, which is obviously my favourite. I had been trying to figure out why he was so cranky and what all the frustrated mmmmmm mmmmmm mmmmmm sounds he had been making for about a week in advance were all about, and now I know. Now he babbles all day long and experiments with his mouth and tongue, trying to make new sounds.

I am going to have to be more careful from now on about asking these questions, since "Isn't Beano supposed to be walking by now?" will surely be followed by him climbing out of his crib and clambering into our bed in the middle of the night. Oh, and "Isn't Thomas supposed to have teeth by now?" followed by him sprouting four in one week. (He doesn't have any yet, in case you were wondering.)

The napping has been the most wonderful turn of events. At about 6.5 months, Thomas suddenly went from having three 30-45 minute naps per day to 1.5 to 2 hour naps twice per day. Short naps are terrible. It seemed like I spent my whole day trying to get him to take a nap, only to have him wake up half an hour later and then be sleepy and unhappy until the next so-called "naptime". I had read about five sleep expert books and scoured every bulletin board on the net trying to figure out how to "extend naps", but to no avail. In the end, he seems to have just grown out of it. This has changed my life: I've started exercising again, I read books, I respond to emails, prepare nutritious lunches and dinners, do laundry, vacuum, and make little frozen cubes of pureed fruits and veg for the Beano. It is super. I am currently a happy little homemaker. I know this will pass, so I'm enjoying it while I can.

Enjoy the latest photos. We have also posted some video of TomTom doing the mamadadababa thing and eating. Hilarious. This thing he does with his mouth when talking makes him look like Beaker.

We thought we should share some video of Thomas and his first couple of swims.

The first few swims were during our Blue Mountain vacation week and then another swim a couple of days ago chez grandpa Brad and grandma JD.

He has really taken to the water and is paddling up a storm!