Easter

Going forward, Easter will forever be known as the day Emma ate chocolate for the first time!

In between the Sunday brunch with family and the Easter dinner we hosted, Emma had loads of fun! She got to see most of her aunts, uncles and grand-parents, play bunny games, eat her first Easter chocolate and show the world her favourite hockey team.

  

Unfortunately, she was a little too young for us to have a Easter egg hunt but we promised her that next year she will get an amazing one. In the meantime, we practiced her bunny ear wearing skills J

Ecomuseum

In the spirit of starting new traditions, we took Emma to the Ecomuseum. In my excitement over the visit, I even bought us 3 yearly passes to ensure that we would come back. The Ecomuseum is a small local zoo about 5 minutes away from our house. It’ not an exotic kind of zoo, no elephants nor giraffes, it houses only animals indigenous to the St-Lawrence Valley of Quebec. Among the 115 species living on the Ecomuseum site, there are: American Porcupines, Arctic Foxes, Black Bears, Rabbits, Northern River Otters, Woodland Caribous, Gray Wolves, White-tailed deer and Lynxes. The animals were not captured in the Wild, they were either rescued or born in captivity.

Emma seemed to enjoy being outside, strolling in the woods but some of the animals were too far for her to really notice them. That was up until we came across the Wild Turkeys. The male was loudly gobbling, as any good-mannered male turkey would do, and that’s when Emma really noticed them ... she was terrified! Apparently Emma is not fond of loud gobbling coming out of some funny-looking bird.

She also noticed the black bears, probably because they are quite big compared to the other animals, and she seemed to like them. She spent most of the rest of the visit eating the paper map ...because that’s how she rolls ;)

Traditions

Every family has traditions. With the arrival of Emma, we are now starting our own family traditions. One of the traditions that I wanted to start is taking her to the “Cabane à sucre” (a.k.a. Sugar Shack) every year. The Sugar Shack is usually open every spring from mid-march to late April. It’s a very typical place to go to if you live in Quebec. Maple syrup is soooo good! I invited the whole family and booked at the famous “Sucrerie de la Montagne”, located in Rigaud, Quebec (http://www.sucreriedelamontagne.com/eng/index.php). There they produce the maple syrup the old-fashioned way : the maple tree is taped with a spout, the sap collected in a pail and transported to a traditional wood-fire evaporator, where it is transformed into maple syrup.

The Sugar shack features horse-drawn sleigh rides, all-you-can-eat sugar feast and maple-taffy-on-snow tasting (my mouth is watering just to write this). Emma got to taste everything : pea soup, home-made crusty bread, maple-smoked ham, baked beans, omelette soufflé, sausages, traditional meatball stew, mashed potatoes, homemade pickles, pancakes with maple syrup and  last but definitely not least maple taffy! Their sugar pie is to die for, according to my husband!

After the feast, there were musicians playing traditional folkloric music. They gave us a pair of wooden spoons to participate. Of course, Emma was only interested in eating them!

It was an amazing day! We ended up with a party of 14 and we had a great time. The weather was beautiful and sunny. It was Emma’s first trip to the sugar shack and our first official “yearly” family tradition.

Milestones

When I was trying to get pregnant and was looking for information about pregnancy, I stumbled upon a web site called “BabyCenter”. It seemed to be the most useful site about pregnancy and babies so it quickly became my addiction (oups I mean my favourite website) even before getting pregnant. When the pregnancy test came back positive (yay!) I registered as a new member, and the website would send you an email every week to tell you how big your future baby was getting and the new things he/she could do. On week 25, BBC (short for BabyCenter) told us that Emma was big as a rutabaga. We laughed at the rutabaga bit for several weeks. But the real milestone mania starts when the baby is born. I never cared much for milestones and Emma was a preemie so we were told that she would be 4 weeks behind other babies her age when it came up for milestones. As I browsed BBC more and more in the first rocky weeks/months of Emma’s life, I noticed that a lot of mommies seemed to be obsessed with milestones and as predicted, Emma always seemed to be a bit behind the other babies her age. But I didn’t care so I didn’t pay much attention. The only time I cared was when we were going for her scheduled visits at her paediatrician. Dr. Djeredjian has that sheet where she check-marks all the things your baby is suppose to do at her age. She sees Emma at her “corrected” age, a month later then all the other babies, but still sometimes some squares go unchecked. THIS is where I begin to worry. How come she doesn’t say “ba” yet? How come she doesn’t clap her hands yet? This is when I need to take a deep breath (or several out of a brown paper bag) and remind myself that all babies are different and we don’t care if she doesn’t say “ba” or doesn’t clap yet. Even if she never claps she will still be the best baby in the whole world. When she does achieve some of the baby milestones we get all excited, take pictures, videos, call all our family members to tell them and ... post it on BBC! (Heehee)

The past couple of weeks was Milestone Mania in our house. She learned how to crawl instead of inch worm, pull herself up, cruise, climb up the stairs, drink regular milk from her sippy cup, blow raspberries and say the infamous “ba”. She might be late reaching some milestones and early reaching others but in the bigger picture it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that she is the most loved baby in the world and we are incredibly proud of her, no matter what she does or when she does it. We firmly believe that she deserves a “Milestone mania Championship belt”.



Emma drinking "real" milk for the first time



Emma ordering and eating a "real" kids meal for the first time

Learning how to stand up

Learning how to cruise

Learning how to crawl

Learning how to read

Slice of life

I changed the name of my blog ... once again. I have wanted to write a few blog entries, but since they had nothing to do with neither “photography” nor “motherhood”, I figured it was time to change the name. I had been thinking about a new title that would really represent what I wanted to write about but couldn’t find the “right” thing. Basically it’s about my family, the days we spend together, our adventures, our quiet family day, our dogs ... our life. This morning, between Emma’s peanut butter toast and our coffees, I asked Anil to help me. He’s much better than me with words. I hope to be as good as him one day and I hope Emma will be as good as himJ. Brainstorming over coffee, on a gray and gloomy raining day, fondly watching Emma eating her blueberry yogurt, we found what I think is very representative of what I want to write about: Slice of Life. 

We are on vacation! By “we” I really mean Anil. He’s taking his two last paid paternity leave weeks and I’m still enjoying my maternity leave so we’ll be home with Emma, together, for the next two weeks. This means we’ll be taking her out and about and I’ll be taking a lot of photos. Yesterday we took her for her first trip to the grocery store! Life is all about enjoying the small things.