This weekend past was Labour Day weekend. The weather was gorgeous, so we took advantage of it. Need to get outside before the rainy season starts!

On Sunday we took Aidan to the water park (Yes, I’m aware of the irony of going to the water park during the sunny, dry season before the rain comes). He sure likes holding the hose. And, he sure doesn’t like sharing it.

In fact, he gets right pissed when someone else wants to use the hose! You should have heard the growling!

Today (Monday) we picked Lorraine up from the Guide camp in the far reaches of Maple Ridge and brought along a picnic basket (thanks CMT!) to have lunch at Alouette Lake in Golden Ears Provincial Park. After lunch, we went for a bit of a hike, with predictable results.

Since Saturday was taken up by looking for and failing to find glasses, Sunday morning we went to Lighthouse Park in West Vancouver. Aidan slept very well the night before so we figured we could get a bit of a hike in before he needed his nap. So 10:30 ish we set out for West Vancouver.

The entrance to the park is off Marine Drive about halfway between Ambleside and Horseshoe Bay. The drive is very scenic and the houses you can see along the road are beautiful. I can only assume that the ones on the water side are gorgeous since you can’t see many of them. By the time we got there and parked Aidan was raring to get going.

We walked through the lovely park down the Valley Trail to Starboat Cove, took some pictures, and continued to the Light Station and the Lighthouse viewpoint. Again we played with my camera and took some pretty decent pictures. We had a snack and Aidan had some running time by the Nature house and Sk’iwitsut buildings. We then set out to the West Beach trail to another viewpoint. Just before the viewpoint on a nicely groomed trail but for one rock that caught my left foot and I twisted my ankle and scraped my knee and leg for the first time in years. (I’d say at least 15 :p) After trying to clean it up as best I could with baby wipes we kept walking and about 15 minutes later Aidan was asleep in the backpack. It is amazing how cute he looks when he is asleep. Anyway, I guess the pictures will tell the whole story.

(Which I will add to the post as soon as Aidan naps.)

Aidan and Anthony at Starboat Cove, Lighthouse Park, West Vancouver 27 August 2006

Lookout over looking Starboat Cove (City of Vancouver in the distance)

Light Station over looking the Lighthouse

Aidan and Anthony (Anthony thought this looked like he had a beer belly but it is just his shirt puffing a bit because of the backpack.)

Snack time for Aidan and a chance for him to run around in the dirt a bit. (He was filthy in about a minute.)

Me, looking westish towards Howe Sound on the West Beach lookout.

Shore Pine Point

Look at that Road Rash

Aidan asleep on the Shore Pine Trail

Aidan still asleep at the car. Unfortunatly he woke up when we put him in the carseat and didn’t nap anymore that afternoon. He did go to bed early though.

Last night we took Aidan to the fireworks.

I know, I know. I know what you’re thinking. It was only last weekend that we tried taking him to the drive-in, and didn’t we learn about keeping him up well beyond his bed-time?

In short, no.

Vancouver has this fireworks festival that runs every year. Three or four countries compete over four nights spaced through the end of July and early August. The fireworks (this year, they’re called the “Celebration of Light” but it’s gone through different names as the sponsors have changed) are a BIG DEAL here. Estimates are somewhere in the neighbourhood of 300000 – 500000 people watching them on any given night. We’re fortunate enough to be able to see them (almost completely) from our dining room windows, which has the benefit of being able to hear the music simulcast and see the fireworks without having to deal with the crowds. But on the other hand, it’s pretty interesting to be in such a large sea of humanity. Gwen and I, pre-baby, have gone down to English Bay and sat with several hundred thousand people on a beach, a scant few hundred feet from the fireworks barge. The five or six hour wait, followed by the several hour trip home is a bit hard to handle now, post-baby.

Aidan was pretty well prepared yesterday. A nice, long walk in the morning, a three hour nap in the afternoon, and reasonable meals all pointed to an after-hours outing that wasn’t going to be a disaster.

So, after supper, we packed up and walked down to Vanier Park. It’s not too far away … about twice the distance from our place to Granville Island (maybe 3 km total). Vanier Park faces English Bay, on the south side of False Creek. From there, we had a clear view of the fireworks barge, and the several hundred thousand people crowding the beach there. Vanier Park was crowded, but not oppressively so. There were probably a few dozen thousand people in the park.

Around 8 pm, we found a spot of parched grass and waited for the two hours we had until the fireworks were to begin. Aidan crawled around, played with the stroller, and we went for several walks with him. All in all, he behaved himself quite well.

Then, after the sun had set, we bought him his first ever glow-sticks. Actually, they were glow-bracelets, but they were perfect. He loved waving them around in the darkness. I think Gwen loved waving them around as much as Aidan did. These kept him busy and occupied up until the fireworks started.

Which they did, promptly at 10 pm. Aidan liked watching them, but wasn’t as mesmerized as we thought he might be. He watched the first little bit while sitting with Gwen, and the majority of them while sitting in his stroller. While sitting in his stroller, though, he alternated between playing with the stroller, watching people around him, and watching the fireworks. The flashes and colours seemed interesting to him, but didn’t captivate him. The explosions didn’t bother him in the least. He didn’t jump, start, or even think about crying when they went off. Gwen and I remarked to each other that he’s such a city boy. The spectacle lasted for about 40 minutes, and by the end, he had pretty much had enough.

We packed our things up and walked home. As you can imagine, the Seawall was pretty crowded, and we didn’t get home until 11:30 pm. Aidan, although flagging, was still awake. It didn’t take him too long to get down though.

For your edification, a video showing Aidan and Gwen with the glow-sticks, and a little bit of the fireworks is below:

We tried to see a movie last night.

Actually, we tried to see it on Friday too, but it didn’t work out. On Friday, our anniversary, we were going to go our for dinner and a movie. Tammy and Chris came over to babysit for us around 7:30, and by ten past eight, we had the boy down in his crib and on the way to slumberland. We walked to Granville Street and hopped a bus downtown to find somewhere to eat. The plan was to find something near the new theatre near Robson and Burrard. There are lots of restaurants downtown, and Robson is one of the areas of concentration. However, every place we went had substantial line ups. Estimates of how long we had to wait varied, but were typically in the neighbourhood of 30 minutes. Now, I realize that this is partly our fault — reservations would have been a good idea — but with The Boy, we planned to expect the unexpected. At any rate, we didn’t have reservations, and I absolutely (perhaps pig-headedly) refuse to wait for any substantial amount of time outside a restaurant, basically *begging* to give them money. It doesn’t seem right.

So, we wandered up and down Robson. By quarter past nine, we decided it was unlikely that we were going to eat dinner and see the movie (which started around 10:30). However, we knew that it (Pirates of the Carribean II) and Cars were playing at the Aldergrove drive-in this weekend, so we decided that we’d go to the drive in on Saturday and just have dinner on Friday. Having given up on the movie, then, we headed down to Gastown where we had an OK, if expensive, dinner at Steamworks.

So, last night, we tried to see the movie, again.

The idea was sound. Pack up The Boy and all his accoutrements, clear out the trunk to make it babyproof, grab some fast-food dinner, and hit the drive-in. The Boy could crawl around the trunk (before you get too upset, recall that we have an SUV, so the “trunk” is open to the passenger cabin) to play, and sit in his car seat to see Cars if he wished. We brought along the play-pen pad to put down in the trunk, and put a sheet over it so that when he got tired, he could sleep back there. That, at least, was the idea.

The movie started at 9:30-ish. Aidan’s typical bed time is 8-ish, so we knew we were messing with the schedule, but for the prize of being able to see a movie (or two!), we were willing to do it. We arrived as planned, with all our gear and food, around 8:45 and pulled into a spot at the already reasonably full drive-in.

We released Aidan from his car seat, put the “40” in the 60/40 seatback down, and let him go. Actually, Gwen crawled back there to keep an eye on him, and to feed him a bit more supper since he had eaten quite sparsely before we left. Aidan thought this was great fun — he got to explore around the trunk, stand up and bang on the windows, and watch all the other cars and the ton of kids that were around. It was all quite new and very exciting.

Right. So, it got dark, and the movie started. We put Aidan into his car seat, and he sat, transfixed, while we watched the traditional short film that preludes all Pixar’s movies. This one was “One Man Band”, and I’d give it about 3 stars. The short ended and the feature started, and Aidan was still watching.

Sooner or later, he lost interest in Cars, and wanted out of his car seat. I’ll spare you the rest of the details, but what followed was an exercise in frustration. I mean, Aidan has historically been difficult to get to sleep. But, we figured that it was going to be late enough that he would collapse and we could leave him sleeping blissfully in the trunk while we settled into our Hollywood-induced escapism. We figured wrong.

For the duration of Cars, he alternately cried, screamed, played with his car seat, drank from a bottle, breastfed, cried and screamed somemore, and generally fought going to sleep with every gram of his little body. Gwen spent most of the movie in the back trying to convince him that sleep was a good thing.

The movie ended around quarter to midnight, and he was still going. Not one minute of sleep; he didn’t give any ground. We made the decision then to cede the loss, and packed up and left. I made the prediction that he’d be asleep by the time we hit the highway (about a 5 minute drive) and sure enough, he was. Strapped into a moving car is sleep inducing. Being loose (or strapped) in a parked car is not.

So, we didn’t see the movie again. We’ve used up our baby-sitting card for a few weeks, and the drive-in option doesn’t seem like much of an option. I guess we’re not meant to see this movie at this point in time.

The only saving grace is that he didn’t wake up during the thunderstorm last night, and it’s ten to ten right now and he’s still not awake. If he had woken at his usual time this morning — I might have been cranky.