The first thing we remember is you getting sick right after your first birthday! You got a really bad cough, like a barking sort of cough. You couldn’t laugh or cry without barking and it would get worse at night. Definitely had to be croup. Mommy was really worried and we took you to the doctor and the fun began. They prescribed this inhaler called Flo-Vent. We started using that on you at night and can I just say, you were SO GROWN UP about it. You let Mommy put the aero-chamber in your mouth and spray the inhaler and you would breathe calmly, just like my super good little guy. We did notice that the inhaler helped you a lot during the night and you were able to sleep well again, but that’s not all we noticed.

Over the next week or so of Flo-Vent, you underwent a transformation. You turned from our happy, sweet, laid-back little guy into A MONSTER FROM HELL! You threw tantrums for no reason, you were angry and hit Mommy and Daddy, and you started to get violent at other times too like randomly throwing things and walking around the house hitting things. We were totally confused by this sudden personality flip! It didn’t seem like a natural stage where you were just learning how to react to things. It was like you were constantly in a state of seething rage about SOMETHING. Finally Mommy was doing some research online and found a LOT of stuff from other mommies about Flo-Vent having those side effects! We took you off the inhaler, and although your cough came back and took awhile to go away, you were back to your happy and friendly self in about 3 days. The funniest part is that doctors say that medicine does NOT cause those effects! Remember this when you’re older Manimo… doctors don’t ALWAYS know what they’re talking about. Most of the time they do, but sometimes when it comes to yourself or your own kids, your instincts are right!

In the month of April, right after you turned one, you started to lose interest in nursing. It might have been because you had your cough for so long – coughing made it pretty hard to nurse sometimes. But you started to kind of self-wean, just during the day at first. You would just look around at your naptime nursing and be so distracted that Mommy couldn’t get a drop of milk into you. On April 27 you went down for your first nap ever with NO milk, and there was no fussing even though you weren’t at home. That’s when Mommy knew you didn’t need to nurse for naps anymore!

Another amazing thing happened in April. You learned to walk! On Thursday April 26, you took your first steps. You were standing at your pirate ship, and you walked about three steps from the ship to the coffee table. At first, Mommy and Daddy just called it a “controlled fall” and we weren’t going to count that as your first steps, because you grabbed for the table pretty fast! But the next day, there were TWO times when you walked 5 or 6 steps to get to Mommy! And the day after that, Mommy took you to visit Oma and you walked back and forth between Oma and Mommy at the playground. You were walking 7-8 steps at a time with NO problems, just two days from your very first step! Even when you stopped walking, you wouldn’t fall. You would just squat down – and you LOVED the whole process. Mommy’s mind was totally blown by how fast you picked it up! By May 8, you were walking like a seasoned pro AND you weren’t nursing during the night anymore. Mommy wasn’t sure if we could even call you a baby anymore!

In May we also had to do a HUGE culling of your stuff. You had grown a bunch, you were walking, and you’d been through a Christmas and a birthday. Your room was crammed to overflowing! Mommy went through your room and filled up a bunch of big bins of toys and clothes to put into storage. Then we went under the landing and Mommy went to work on the stuff under there! We kept all of Mommy’s favorite outfits and all of your best toys, and we still ended up with four big bags of stuff to give away. We sent it to Uncle Nick and Auntie Natasha to look through for your cousin Blake. Maybe he’ll wear some of your old stuff!

Since you’ve started walking, everyone has been thinking you’ll become quite a handful. But you are just a super good little guy! You do occasionally grab things you aren’t supposed to have, but most of the time you are just walking to get around the house and to whatever toy you want. You don’t even touch Daddy’s TV… good job! When Mommy does have to rescue you, you’re never mad… it’s like you’re already trying to learn what you can and can’t be getting into. You’re a pretty careful little guy, and you will NEVER hear Mommy and Daddy complain about that!

You do have your share of little mishaps though… the thing is, you don’t have to be walking for them to happen! One night in May, Mommy and Daddy were changing you and getting you ready for bed, and you grabbed the BIG bottle of baby powder and tipped it up just like a glass. There was a big FOOF and your whole mouth was filled with powder! This was part of the time right after you learned to use cups, where you thought EVERYTHING that was vaguely shaped like a cup, or bottle, or glass, must be something to drink. Your mouth shrank right up, you started smacking your tongue and lips like a dog with a mouthful of peanut butter… and you TRIED to cry, but you were so dried out you couldn’t! Mommy and Daddy were stifling laughs the whole time we spent trying to help you clean out and re-wet your mouth. Don’t judge us Manmo, when your kids do stuff like that someday, you’ll understand how hard it is to be serious when you’re “supposed” to be!

Your first walking injury happened in June. Pretty impressive… you were walking for over a month before you hurt yourself for the first time. You came careening out of the hallway (yes, careening… you get going pretty fast sometimes) and your top half just out-paced your bottom half and you went over face first. You biffed yourself pretty good on our magazine rack and cut your face open right at the corner of your eye. You had nice little goose-eggs above and below the cut too! Mommy just about had a heart attack when she saw how close the cut was to your eye. And as for Daddy… well, we don’t have a magazine rack anymore. Where’s Mommy going to keep the Sears catalogs?

Another thing you started doing this summer is stairs. Those took you awhile, but you follow Mommy up and down all the time now. And by follow, I mean you take 10 minutes to get between floors while Mommy goes about 1 or 2 steps below you in case you fall. With linoleum and concrete on our staircase, Mommy and Daddy will probably be paranoid for a long time. You go everywhere with Mommy now, and you’re learning about laundry… I don’t think you’ve ever been so interested as they day Mommy washed the your bubby and you saw me do it! Before too long you’ll be helping with the laundry, and maybe some other house work! (I’m allowed to dream, right?)

You’re starting to get pretty close to your cousin Jaiden this summer too. Mommy’s been babysitting Noah and Jaiden and you have been spending a lot of time with them! In July we had your 12 month immunizations and you were sick for almost a week from them, just with mild fever but you were pretty tired and clingy the whole time. I knew just how close you and Jaiden were getting when we were babysitting and without anyone asking her, she walked all the way to the kitchen, found your bubby and brought him over to you. It’s been a fun year for you – we took you guys to the corn maze, lots of parks and playdates, and even took Noah and Jaiden to three parades this year! It’s always a party in the car when you guys are together.

One last big milestone for this summer: Your first camping trip! Mommy and Daddy got a spot at Brewers’ campground and we went with our tent for 2 nights. It rained a LOT! We never got to go to the beach at all. We had Oma and Opa, Grandma and Grandpa, and Uncle Allan and Auntie Jolene out in the evenings for supper. We ate great – steak, thick burgers, hot dogs, roasted marshmallows – Mommy and Daddy even tried to make s’mores, and failed miserably. You loved the marshmallows and chocolate separately though! Unfortunately we barely would get a meal eaten, and it would be raining and we’d be sitting in the tent again. You were a good sport though, playing with your truck and other toys outside whenever you could and behaving like a perfect little man when we were stuck in the tent. One thing’s for sure – after this camping trip, we know that you can handle anything! We can’t wait for all the years of fun ahead with you, sweet little guy. We love you forever and ever!

First of all, I’m pretty sure our renter is mysophobic. I Googled to get the correct term, but this term describes someone who has a specific type of OCD: the pathological fear of germs, and an obsession with making sure they can never come into contact with anything dirty. Why do I think this?

When this guy moved in, we showed him the room that would be his, the living area he could use, where his shelf was in the pantry, and where all the dishes were. He never used any of it – never stored any food upstairs, never touched our dishes, and always ate out. We didn’t think much of it, a lot of guys just don’t want to cook! But then he started coming home with a lot of stuff. He bought a slow-cooker, toaster oven, and some other cooking devices, and a complete set of his own dishes including casserole dishes and tupperware. He stores everything in his room and BLEACHES it every time it’s used – to the point where I can’t go into my basement without getting a headache and burning nose. I mentioned to him once that I’m very sensitive to the smell of bleach and he was welcome to use our dish soap, and he said “Oh, I hardly ever use it so don’t worry”. Let me just clarify that “hardly ever” means “every single day, in high concentrations, on every dish I touch, and there will be large white splatters all over my bathroom floor from it”. He probably wouldn’t even use our fridge or freezer if he had his own; everything he refrigerates is in double or triple plastic bags and tightly tied so it can never touch anything else in the freezer or fridge.

The weirdness doesn’t stop with the eating and cooking habits either. His bathroom is like two different people’s bathrooms rolled into one. The sink, toilet and tub are PRISTINE. He keeps a bunch of cleaners in there, and I’m pretty sure he cleans the fixtures every day. They look nicer than they did when we bought them. But the rest of the bathroom is FILTHY! He puts leftover food in his garbage can with no bag in there and the walls all around the sink are constantly splattered with food that he doesn’t wash off (he does his dishes – with bleach – in the bathroom sink because he won’t use our sink). The floor is disgusting – covered in hair, fuzz, bits of garbage and food, and big white powdery splatters of dried up bleach (which he “hardly ever” uses). The bath mat is so soiled that we will be throwing it out when he leaves – I wouldn’t ever want to walk on something that dirty. The theory I’ve come up with is that he ONLY cleans what is going to touch his body. And if you’re wondering about why the bath mat is so dirty, he wears rubber shoes whenever he’s in the house so I don’t imagine his feet ever touch the mat. The only question is – THEN HOW DID IT GET SO DIRTY?

Then we come to his room. We didn’t even realize what it was like until just last month – we don’t go in our renter’s bedrooms unless absolutely necessary, so we never know what they look like. But we showed the room to a potential renter and putting it mildly, we were utterly dismayed and disgusted. The room isn’t overly dirty, but the nice tan rug we had in there is ruined. My sister lived here for three years with those rugs, and when she left, they still looked like they were brand new. The rug in his bedroom now looks like someone picked up a bunch of dog poop from somewhere and rubbed it into the rug until it dissolved. Add that to the fact that the rug is covered (like the bathroom floor) in hair and bits of black fuzz and thread, and who would want to live there? He has agreed to have the rug cleaned, so hopefully it will come as clean as it was when he moved in.

There’s a lot of weirdness in his bedroom too – we offered him a dresser when he moved in, but he refused the use of that and anything he doesn’t hang he just keeps on the floor. He has a miniature kitchen in one corner with all of his dishes and cooking appliances, and his ironing board. He says he “loves” to iron because it’s “relaxing”. I’m pretty sure he even irons his sheets. He won’t use anything of ours in there either, unless absolutely necessary. When he moved in there were no curtains on the window, but I had a curtain rod and a set of black curtains which he accepted and said he’d put up himself. Ten months later, he has a sheet tacked over the window and the rod and curtains are gathering dust in the corner. He bought his own vacuum (didn’t want to use ours) but I’ve only seen him use it once EVER, and I still periodically clean up noodles, bits of food and other debris that gets kicked out of his room into the hallway.

Anyway, we put up with the weirdness and obsessive behavior for almost 10 months, and since he keeps to himself we could realistically put up with it for a lot longer. But lately, since he lost his job and is here all the time, the STUPID behavior has started to show itself. I actually don’t know how this man has survived until age 53, and I have trouble believing that he owns a house back in Ontario considering some of the things he says and does. I don’t know how his kids survived him, either!

Something that’s become a necessity is being right there every time he comes upstairs. We have a baby gate for a VERY good reason, and it’s always shut. Well he was leaving it open every time he came upstairs, even if Zane was right there on the dining room floor. Each time he’d come up, I would get up, sigh loudly, go over and shut and latch the gate. I did this probably 10 times and finally one day he asked “Oh, will the dog go downstairs?” REALLY? How do you see a closed baby gate, and a baby crawling around, and not make the connection that you should close the gate? So I explained to him that no, I wasn’t worried about the dog, but I didn’t want Zane to fall down the stairs. He looked utterly shocked that such a thing was possible, but he does shut it most of the time now. 

Our phone is another example of the general day to day incompetence. Maybe he didn’t use it much before now, or maybe he only had incoming calls – I don’t know. But now, because he’s trying to find a job and straighten out EI, he uses it constantly. Which is fine… the cost doesn’t increase by usage. The issue is, I count four times now that he’s come upstairs looking for me and saying the phone isn’t working. Each time I’ve had to SHOW him HOW to use a cordless phone (push the green button, dial number). And each time he acts like I’m an absolute genius. The kicker is, when he moved in he told us he used to work in I.T. – uh huh, right. It seems like this man is going to always rely on someone else for communication – he’s had parcels mailed here a couple of times, and when I gave him the parcel notice he didn’t know what to do with that either. And not like, he didn’t know where the post office was – he had to ask me if he was supposed to take the parcel notice up to the counter.

Quite possibly the worst, yet funniest story is the breaker box. He irons in his room – like every day – and when he plugs his iron in on the same circuit as his stereo, alarm, computer, both of our computers, our home server, and our router (the two bedrooms have their plugins on a shared circuit), the added load of the iron quite often trips the breaker. The obvious solution would be to iron in a different room, but he doesn’t want to do that. OK fine… fixing a tripped breaker is easy after all, right? Wrong! Every time he’s tripped it, I’ve had to fix it. One day I came home from an appointment and my stepmom told me he had been “frantically” looking for me because he needed to print something and his printer wasn’t working. I didn’t think much of it – he’s needed tech support before, and I didn’t know the breaker was tripped because I hadn’t even been downstairs. When he came home, he told me he’d tripped it and I just said “oh, ok thanks” figuring he was just letting me know to check on our computers. He got this look on his face and said “Well can you HELP me?” a bit indignantly! So I went downstairs, walked to the breaker box, and flipped it back on for him – he was once again AMAZED and asked me to show him which one it was. I explained that when a breaker switch trips, you can tell which one it is because it’s not in the ON position like all the other ones… not to mention, there’s usually a little red tab that appears. I had trouble believing that someone who supposedly owns a home doesn’t know how to turn a tripped breaker back on, but I figured since it had been explained, the problem would be solved!

So I get up this morning and try to use my tablet to check Facebook, no internet. Try to stream video to the Xbox, no internet. Upstairs wireless is working but downstairs isn’t. So I realize, the renter probably tripped the breaker again while ironing in his bedroom. Did something not compute when I explained how easy it was to flip a tripped breaker back on? I go downstairs and I can see that he’s looked at the breaker box (the cover is moved and the little door is open) but the breaker is still tripped. So I can only assume that he looked, was too stupid to figure out how to turn it back on, and just left because I wasn’t up yet. I turn the breaker back on, and I hear his stereo come on in his room and his radio alarm blaring. OK fine… I go in his room to shut off these items, and his iron is sitting on the padded ironing board in a pile of his clothes, plugged in and turned on! Well thank God I had to go in and shut the noise off, or I wouldn’t have known the iron was on and could have had a fire! Now I am trying to wrap my head around the fact that a grown man can’t figure out that his iron is going to turn back on when I flip the breaker, and maybe he should unplug it.

All I can say is, the end of February can’t come fast enough – I just hope our house is still intact when it does arrive!

• All four of our parents, for their loving support and for putting up with us!
• Barb and Greg Chalmers for help setting up the hall and tearing down the next day. Barb also hemmed an insane number of table runners and helped Crystal with many other things in preparation for the wedding day, and Greg took over and handled the entire bar, including liquor license and finding bartenders!
• Jim and Jan Calliou for hosting a great breakfast the morning after the wedding, and Jan for contributing a lot of baking for the midnight lunch.
• Vi Steiger and Margaret Steiger (grandmother and aunt of the bride) for handling the entire midnight lunch including coffee, juice, meat, cheese and buns, and snacks as a wedding gift to us.
• Jolene Ask for taking over where she saw a void. She became known by all of our family and vendors for taking care of all the little details that needed overseeing on the wedding day. I will never forget walking out of the ceremony and Jolene handing us each a glass of water that we didn’t even know we needed! So much of the stress of our day simply evaporated because of her and we didn’t even ask for her help.
• Carolyn Chalmers (sister of the bride) for planning my stagette, helping with invitations and other wedding tasks, and assisting with set up and tear down of the hall.
• Carl Chalmers (brother of the bride) for paying for a limousine for the stagette!
• Doug Kirchhof for pitching in last minute and helping find some important missing items, even though he was already busy taking care of his daughter!
• Reuben Calliou for doing an incredible job as our Master of Ceremonies and for his steady supply of humor while performing that duty.
• The wedding party for their supportiveness and attentiveness all day, and for their patience with the bride as photography wore on all afternoon! Especially Katelyn and Ashley Robinson for performing their parts in the ceremony flawlessly and for their incredible patience.
• The participants in our ceremony: Jan Calliou and Barb Chalmers as candle lighters, Jolene Ask and Penny Crozman as readers, Jessica Bryan as our soloist, and our minister Paul Vallee for performing a beautiful ceremony.
• Our DJ, Chris Lamontagne, for doing our ceremony music and for pitching in where he didn’t have to and helping set up for the reception.
• Our caterer Linda Hagermann for cooking an amazing meal, providing excellent head table service, and for not charging us for all the guests who replied yes and didn’t show!
• Our bartenders for their efficiency and skill behind the bar, their friendliness to every guest, and their vigilance in making sure we had no liquor-related issues.
• Our photographers for near-perfect video coverage (which we have seen) and for the photos (which we haven’t seen yet), for their creativity and great attitude, and for putting up with my pickiness as the photography was the most important part of the day for me.
• Kevin and Cyndie See for the beautiful tiered cake which was created as a gift to us.