99 Days of Laughter: Canadian is...

I may not be the most patriotic person in Canada, but any chance to dress Samantha up in something cute and seasonal and I'm all for it! I even got Josh in on it too! His inner Daddy spirit has come alive and he donned the Canadian flag with his family!

There are many great things I love about being Canadian. First, are my choices. Such as the choice to stay home with my baby for up to a year! I still don't think this is long enough, but it is one of the longest paid maternity leaves in the world! I would never have given up these last few weeks with Samantha. She has really bloomed into her own personality and is now literally running circles around me! My legs are officially her personal jungle gym...lol...and I wouldn't trade it for the world!

Next, is ice cream...ok...so this isn't exactly a "Canadian" thing, but who else would go out in the middle of winter to DQ for a Blizzard? I'm pretty sure every almost husband has had to do this for his pregnant wife...at least twice! Good thing for Josh, my craving was Menchie's...and it wasn't winter; though I did make him drive to Swiss Chalet once at 9 o'clock at night for a baked potato in the middle of the winter!

Well, Samantha, with a little persuasion from some family, finally got to try her first ice cream cone. OK...calm down...I know, I'm simply terrible for denying my daughter this amazing delicious wonder...but let's be honest, she also just got cake for the first time too! And that took a lot of convincing from Grampa Dave! And I have given her sugar-free, dairy-free ice cream (if you consider that ice cream) and some sherbert too.

But this time, she got the real deal (OK...it was frozen yogurt...so half deal...) but she got the whole cone all to herself!

She had a white-knuckled death-grip on this cone! We barely could wipe the melted sticky liquid off her fingers and face without a minor breakdown of "How dare you try and take my cone away from me!" when we tried to get a nice Canada Day family photo!

After she finally finished, cone and all...we were off to the sugarland races! This girl was literally trying to climb the walls! Holding onto Daddy's hands, she climbed everything he would let her. Up the stairs, down the stairs...up Daddy, down Daddy...oh look, there's a wall! I bet I could climb that too...or at least hide in it! And if she couldn't climb up it, she would climb under it or in it!