Theo Jonathan Carroll: Injury-Free for 4 Days!

That's a real feat when you have such an accident-prone little boy around. Not that there's any other type of little boy, I guess. Good times.

So hello again, everyone. Welcome, yet again, to Theo's blog for the week of November 7-13. I have some fantastic pictures this week, as per usual, as well as a mitt-full of videos, so hold on to your hats.

Here's the scoop on the injury front (did you like how I put the teaser at the top, interjected a welcome, and then moved on with the story? Oh man, that's just so professional). Like I said, it's been four days without injury, which is pretty good. The last injury came when Theo decided that face-planting into the carpet with his soother in his mouth was a good idea. Turns out is wasn't--he cut his gum and was bleeding in his mouth, which was pretty scary for me to see--I thought he might have actually knocked one of his teeth out, but it turns out it was much more innocuous than that. Just a little blood, that's all. Whew.

Other than that, it's been a busy week. Last Wednesday, Steph's mom flew in for a 10-day visit, which has been great fun for all of us. It's nice to have someone around to talk to besides each other. Not that we're boring or don't like talking to each other, it's just that after 10 weeks of the same stuff--either school or Theo--and having all shared experiences, it gets a little bit cyclical. Dig, dig, dig. I'd better stop while I'm still sort-of ahead.

Then on Friday, Steph's best friend, Tanya, flew in for the weekend. She was supposed to fly in with her boyfriend, Mark (yes, that did get confusing over the course of the weekend), but he got tied up with a last-minute inspection at work. No, wait, that was the story we told her. What really happened was that he flew in early and dropped a proposal on her, surprising her completely at the Banff National Park tollbooth. Sweet. And we were part of the ruse. Great fun. And congratulations to Tanya and Mark, who will likely be getting hitched next summer. They just went home tonight.

Anyway, the whole ruse at Banff meant that we had to be a part of it, and since Tanya's plane didn't arrive until 10:30 at night, and Banff is about 350 km away from Three Hills, it meant that we stayed over in Banff on Friday night. That, of course, meant spending our first night away from Theo since he got home from the nursery. It was surprisingly tough.

I thought that I'd be able to just get away and hang out with my wife again, and that I wouldn't miss him. I thought I'd really enjoy the time away, actually. But it was hard for both of us to not think of him a lot. In fact, we both woke up at 6:30, which is his normal wake-up time, to feed him, even though (a) he wasn't even there, and (b) we hadn't gone to bed until 3:00 the night before. We both got back to sleep eventually. In fact, during that evening, Steph kept waking up and thinking to herself, "Where's Theo?" We're so attached. In fact, on the way home, I had to slow myself down several times because I was driving faster so that we'd get home to see him again faster. But we got home, and he was happy to see us, although I'm not entirely sure he knew we were gone, because he was having such a good time with Nana.

What else? Oy, I hope we didn't pack anything more into this week. Oh, today he had his first taste of meat (chicken), albeit the pureed kind. We'll see how that goes. It's time to get him on table food, though, so we're moving in that direction.

The big focus of the week has been a continued assertion of personality. He's at the point now where not only does he know what he wants to do, he also gets mad if he can't do it. This has led to the occasional standoff, but it's all good. For example, he really likes to play with a large metal grate on the bottom of our fridge, which, of course, is probably one of the least safe things to play with. So there's been much pulling him away from it this week.

The other thing that's been really fun (and really cool for me, personally, to see) is his fascination with my guitar. In fact, we have to have some guitar time every day. And when it's time for guitar time to be over, oh boy, you do not want to be in the room for the tantrum that follows. But that's all part of being a parent. We're trying hard to tread that fine line between indulgence and discipline, which isn't easy. I, for one, think it's perfectly reasonable to set limits on certain activities, like guitar playing (especially after 10 minutes of him drooling all over my strings). But it's tough to take the object away and hear him wail. Bah. At least he hasn't asked to get a tatoo yet.

I think that's all I've got to say this week, and it's quite a bit, so I hope I didn't forget anything really important (although I'm sure I did). Let's move on to some photos.

To start off the photo cavalcade this week, here's some evidence that we're really bad parents. I remember when I was a kid--I wasn't aloud to get that close to a TV screen. It was bad for my eyes, or my face would freeze in that position, or something like that. Apparently, we don't care about things like that...

In our defence (just in case you didn't catch the sarcasm dripping from that last paragraph--I'm still cleaning it up off the floor, actually), we don't let him stay that close to the TV. In fact, he never really cares that it's on. It's just that in this particular case, he was interested. And the only reason Steph took the picture was to show me that Theo loves the Doodlebops, who I can't stand. I think it's a frame-up, actually, but that's for another day.

Moving on. As I mentioned above, guitar playing was a central focus of this week. So I decided that a few lessons were in order. It's never too early, right? Here I am, teaching the young apprentice (who seems to be more interested in chewing on my knee)...

Finally, after much training, he was ready to go it on his own and whip out a face-melting solo...

Here are a couple of "deer-in-headlights" shots from a couple days ago. He's wearing his new shirt that daddy bought him in Banff--it has three little critters on it and says "Little Rascals." Cute stuff. Cuter kid, though...

The vast majority of photos this week all come from one particularly good photo shoot--the ballcap sessions. I don't know why, but he was just in a particularly photogenic mood this day, and mommy got some amazing shots. For example...

Here he is, holding dominion over his, um, domain, and looking very coy about it. Ah, what would life be like if Theo ran the world? Lots of formula and pablum for all!

But then sometimes you wonder if he wouldn't be a total and complete tyrant. What kind of scheme is he cooking up here?

You can almost hear the evil laughter. But of course, every totalitarian ruler gets distracted by his feet every once in a while...

Did I say ruler? What I meant was court jester. How can you tell he's related to me?

Back on the floor again, which is sometimes more fun than sitting on your throne...

This one we call the "K-Fed" look. Hey, that's what he should have been for Halloween. How scary would that have been?!

Finally, it was a tie for best photo this week, thus there are three photos in the much-coveted final photo spot on the blog. Can you blame me for not being able to decide?

Outstanding. After that, it's going to be hard to top it with some video, but I think we can. By the way, I toyed with the idea of changing my format this week and interspersing video and stills, but I'm just not ready to take that kind of step yet. Give it time. One day, I might even be bold enough to put the videos first. Ooh. That'd just be crazy.

Anyway, the videos. Five this week. Well, I guess there are two that are more like parts one and two, but hey, it totals five. This first one is a great companion to the pictures of guitar-playing, which is a major thing here. Also, the reason I look like such a dork at the beginning of this video is because I thought Steph was taking a still picture, so I'm trying to pose. Then she says, "I'm taking a video," or something like that, and I quickly turn to video-mode. Like you weren't going to notice that. How nonchalant did I think I was being? Anyway, here's the video, and my Oscar-winning performance...

And here's Theo giving us a lovely guitar solo...

This one was taken when Steph was doing the ballcap photo shoot. Nothing really "happens" in it, except that Theo acts like his normal self. This is more of a "slice of life" kind of video. But you can't just live on action movies, you know? Check it out...

Finally, the two-part video. Just before Steph started to shoot this one, Theo was doing the funniest thing into this cup (his favourite--you might remember it from a few weeks ago), where he would make a noise and hear how his voice sounded, and then get the biggest giggle fit. He (of course) didn't do that when the camera was filming, but he's a pretty funny guy to just watch. By the way, the reason there are two videos is because Steph initially just stopped filming, but thought that Theo was going to do the giggle thing again, so she filmed another one. They both have their place, and, although they would likely be able to stand alone, I present them to you as a pair.

Here's part 1...