Fun in Cabo

I'd been meaning to write a big post about our trip to Cabo San Lucas, but it's dragging out so I'll forgo the nicely written bit ("nicely written" is in the eye of the beholder, of course) and just go with some bullet points of interest from our trip.

- wasn't sure what it would be like to vacation with Cam.  Turns out it's relaxing but not restful - not much sleep for us, but we didn't do anything so we just relaxed.
- we went on a whale watch cruise for free, courtesy of attending a timeshare presentation.  Didn't see many whales, but it was nice to sail on the water, especially when they cruised right into Land's End with all the big rocks and the famous arching rock - El Arco
- it was on the cool side there.  Daytime temps in the mid 20s which is comfy but not hot as we were expecting for Mexico. Our resort was a big wind tunnel so it was always cold walking around the resort
- Sea of Cortes was freezing cold... not that it stopped me from swimming in it.  It was also ridiculously salty; I had trouble diving down deeper than about 3 feet and there were white salt stains on my trunks once I dried out on the beach.  I've never seen that before.
- it was great fun with Cam in the kiddie pool and on the beach, and everybody loved him
- Cabo itself is a weird mix of ghetto run-down Mexican town with big money luxury stuff for tourists: the tourist Golden Zone right on the marina featured swanky open-air lounges and restaurants right on the water and a beautiful (and expensive) mall, while right across the street was scary back alley-type buildings housing seedy looking shops.  Great restaurants over there, though
- speaking of restaurants, we had some really great food, including taking a freshly caught fish to a restuarant and having them prepare it four different ways for us.  We didn't catch the fish ourselves; it was given to us by the timeshare seller who hails from Edmonton
- we had a good time there, and enjoyed it so much we actually ended up buying into the timeshare at the presentation - maybe that's why he gave us a fish.  :)  Now we have a great vacation destination every year at a good price

Check out the pictures of our Cabo trip.

Sara's down in LA now on a business trip, and Cam and I will fly out to meet her tonight and we'll spend the weekend with Sara's family in LA.

It'll be the first time either one of us has travelled alone with Cam.  Sara took the luggage with her when she flew down earlier this week, so luckily I won't have a lot of luggage to deal with.  I'll have Cam in a carrier, a  backpack on my back, and I'll be carrying the infant seat to be checked in.  Sounds manageable.  We'll see how it goes, we leave in a few hours...

I'm working in a cafe now, and a few minutes ago a police officer walks into the cafe.  He stands blocking the door and gives everybody the eye.

"The Citibank across the street got robbed 20 minutes ago.  Hispanic guy, about this high <holds his hand at about 5 feet high>, stout build.  Anyone happen to see him?"

None of us have, the officer takes the name of the cafe owner, and leaves.  The cafe owner then says "Man, that's the second time in a month the bank's been robbed."  and one of the customers says "Yeah, that branch gets robbed all the time."

The bank is directly across the street from the cafe; I'm sitting right at the window so I had front row seats for the bank robbery!  If I wasn't so wrapped up in my work I may have actually seen the guy running out from the bank with a bag of cash slung over his shoulder.  Dang, that woulda been cool to see.  I'll have to come back to this cafe more often.

Kids should really leave this stuff to the pros.

Combining my love for hockey goalies and yo momma jokes results in my new favourite commercial:

We're back from our week's vacation to Cabo.  It was a good vacation, but the return trip was terrible - it was a long, long day of travel on Saturday as we left the hotel at 11am and didn't get home til 10:30pm.

We originally had a two hour layover at LAX, but some big storms in the Dallas area delayed our plane and our layover ended up being over 4 hours.  A two hour difference may not seem like much, but when you have a five month old baby whose sleep/feed schedule is totally thrown out of whack, those extra two hours sitting around in an airport can be killer.  Luckily one of the bars in the airport had a flatscreen tv facing the main walkway, so Cam and I killed some of the time by watching the NBA Slam Dunk contest.  There's something about sports that totally captures Cam's attention, as he intently watches hockey and basketball.  I wish I had sports for Cam to watch on both legs of our flight; he was crying a lot on the flight and I ended up having to walk him up and down the aisle and camp out at the back of the plane where the loud droning sound of the engines put him to sleep.  For our next trip, we may just have to get a portable DVD player to distract him on the flight.

It was hard to keep to a set schedule on our vacation so Cam's sleep patterns are all over the place now, plus we barely bottle fed him during our trip so he got used to getting the boob.  He's going back to daycare so we need to get him back on the bottle again, so we're going cold turkey and he only gets the bottle for the next couple days.  Of course he's rejecting the bottle.

Not sleeping well + not feeding well = an extremely cranky Cam.

He seemed okay through today as we did some grocery and baby supply shopping, but when we got home in the early evening he started to get cranky at it got to the point where he was crying at top volume, with nothing able to soothe him, for 30 minutes straight.  He would then suddenly fall asleep - he basically exhausted himself out with all the crying and just crashed.  This small respite would last for about 30 minutes, after which he'd awaken and start crying again.  With nothing seeming to soothe him, we resorted to the only thing we could think of: Feng Shui.

Thanks to www.fengshuiboston.com, we quickly figured out that Cam was sleeping in a bad position, so we completely reorganized our bedroom to get Cam oriented to his 'auspicious direction.'  As we were rearranging the furniture we lay Cam down on our bed orienting in the right direction and he was all smiles and playful laughs.  Not sure if that's Feng Shui at work or Cam just in a good mood at that particular time, but it sure was nice.  We'll see how well this new Feng Shui'd bedroom orientation works out.

On our way to today's grocery/baby supply shopping, we stopped for breakfast at my new favourite breakfast joint Marie Callendar's, and the waitress saw Cam and remarked "Oh, he's so chunky!"  Chunky?  I'd never heard Cam described as such before, and after having thought about it I have to say I don't like it.  Not that I have anything against him being called chunky, but moreso that I think it's an inaccurate description: 'chunky' conjures up an image of a person who has large-ish lumps all over his body so that he resembles a chunky Oh Henry bar.  Cam is uniformly round and plump all over so he's not really 'chunky'.  'Chubby' or 'pudgy' would be more accurate.  'Porky', 'plus-sized', or 'well-upholstered' would be most accurate.

Speaking of plus-sized, we got Cam a new diaper size.  Weight-wise, he's a size three which runs from 18-25 lbs (Cam's 21 lbs), but Cam's butt is so big that the size threes he'd been wearing have gotten very snug on him and if you don't put the diaper on him just perfectly it's a tough job making the stretchy tabs reach around him properly.  So he's graduated up to size four.  Size four runs from 26 - 37 lbs and the other parents I see buying size fours have kids that look like they're all 1 year or older!!  How the heck is Cam wearing diapers that are meant for 1 year olds?!?!?  And what is Cam going to wear when he's 1 year old - Depends undergarments????

That's it, Cam's gonna start a regimented exercise routine - three 15 minute sessions in his jumperoo everyday.  Time to start a new Fat-Off!

Still off the charts

Cam had his four month checkup a couple weeks back and he's doing great.  He's still a big boy, clocking in at 20lbs 10oz, but he's actually slowing down in growth.  He's still off the charts at 97th percentile, but two months ago he was 98th percentile.  At this rate, he'll be back on the charts by the time he's a year old.  :)  His head is slowly catching up to his body, as well - it's now at 40th percentile compared to 25th percentile two months ago.  No more little head-big body syndrome for Cam!

I've posted a few new pics of Cam, mostly of us just hanging out at home and Cam having fun.

We're off to sunny Cabo San Lucas, Mexico for a week!  Cabo is the next big IT destination, if you didn't know; all the Hollywood stars are going... at least, that's what Sara tells me.  I'll just be happy to plop my butt down on a warm sandy beach.  Wouldn't hurt if Katie Holmes was on the beach too, but I'll be happy just the same.

It'll be Cam's first sun vacation.  He's already experienced a cold snowy winter climate in Toronto, now it's time for him to see what a tropical beach and surf is like.  I can't wait to see his reaction to the sand, and it's going to be great fun swimming with him in the pool.  I'm going to be torn between wanting to take pictures of Cam as he does stuff for the first time versus actually doing stuff with him.

We're staying in a condo right on the beach, so it should be a very relaxing week.  We won't be doing any of the adventure-type activities so it'll be new vacationing style for Sara and I, but it should be great fun with Cam.  Our first family vacation!