I need to blog...

...but every time I think of something to write, I'm either nursing a baby, jiggling a crying baby, running after a stray toddler, feeding myself... and the list goes on. OR Conor is on the computer working. Not to mention that most of the posts I want to do involve pictures from my camera, but my camera is NEVER on the same floor as the computer it seems, and I'm always too lazy to correct that wrong.

So the posts will come. They will be about events that happened at least a week ago, since that seems to be about as often as I upload the pics from my camera. But they will come.

I'll leave you with two little funny Finn stories.

He likes to hold Elle every so often, and then when he gets tired he'll say "take away baby Elle". The other day he was sitting on my bed and wanted to hold her, so he grabbed the pillow that I use to nurse her and put it on his lap and then started lifting up his shirt. He looked up at me with the biggest grin, pointed at his belly button and said "feed baby Elle Finn mung?!" (translation: mung = milk). Sorry kid, you aren't quite equipped for that!

Mommy brain has just struck and I can't remember the second story. So next time...

Naptime

We've been having issues with Finnian's naptime lately. He likes to come out of his room. I don't mind if he doesn't sleep (actually, I really do mind that he doesn't always sleep and nap, but there could be worse things), but he likes to leave his room, which I'm not having ANY of that!

Today he was in his room singing, and reading books and then I heard the organ, and I knew he had left his room. So I brought him back to his room and told him he didn't have to sleep, but he had to stay in his room until Conor or I said he could come out.

Then I heard him on the monitor reading a book, but the page turning sounded as though it wasn't one of his books (the room doubles as Conor's office), and then I heard him breathing as though he was asleep. I figured he has probably been reading on the chair and not his bed, so I wondered if he was asleep in the chair or not.

Conor went down and came back up with this picture.

He fell asleep reading Conor's bible!! haha Unfortunately it was already after 230 at that point, he didn't nap as long as normal, but we'll take what we can get!

Finn's sleepover at Grandma's

Below is a picture of Finn and his little suitcase going to Grandma's house for his sleepover.

Last night went splendidly. The movie was awesome! And when we got home, Elle was sleeping peacefully and hadn't even woken up for the bottle. Here are the pictures and captions of Finn's sleepover that my mom put on facebook.

"Finn had lots of toys out"

"He loves having a bath"

"Cleaning my bathroom"

"Bedtime snack"

"He's sound asleep, I must have tired him out, so sweet"

"Morning time, eating grapes and watching cartoons with Grandma"

I'm going to do some shopping with Elle this morning and then I'll go pick up my little... my BIG boy!

Harry Potter

I had it all planned out. The final Harry Potter movie was coming out and I planned to re-read all the books and see it in theaters before the baby was born. But I would need to see it on one of the first few days, because everything indicated that the baby would/could be born early.

But then she DID come early - earlier than the movie was coming!!!

Fastforward... I finally finished the final book after Elle was born and tonight Conor and I are going to see the movie!

Finnian is having his first PLANNED sleep over at Grandmas, and Elle is with the Sweeney Grandparents and a bottle.

I'm so excited - can you tell??

Follow ups

Today Elle is 5 weeks old, and we went to the hospital for her follow up for the heart murmur.

She now weighs 8 pounds 5 ounces! When I looked back at Finn's weight gain, from birth he had gained more than 2 pounds by the time he was 3 weeks... Elle has just gained 2 pounds from her birth weight at 5 week. Finn really was chunky!

Unfortunately the pediatrician could still hear the heart murmur - so now she is refering us to a cardiologist at BC Childrens Hospital. She really doesn't seem concerned though - Elle's color is good, her breathing is good, her weight gain is great.. but a cardiologist will be able to better see how big the hole is, where it is, etc.

People can live their whole lives with benign heart murmurs, which don't affect their activities in any way... or heart murmurs can eventually close up all on their own... so keep praying that Elle is in one of those camps :)

Birchwood Dairy

Last Wednesday we went to Birchwood Dairy to buy some of their yummy ice cream.. but we also did the self tour to see the "maternity and calf ward"

There was a bit of a petting zoo there as well... here's some pictures

Splashdown Park

Every summer my family does something big together. The year we got married it was Dinotown. The summer after we got back from Australia it was Dinotown again. But then everyone boycotted after that (if you've been to Dinotown, you'll know why!)

Last summer we went to the Trans-Canada Waterslides by Bridal Falls, and it was really fun! The kids had fun, the adults had fun - mom even went down one slide!! So this year we decided to do waterslides again, but as the only day that would work was a Sunday, and Dan had obligations at his Church in Ladner, we decided to go out his way to Splashdown Park in Tsawwassen.

We had heard that the slides weren't that great, but we didn't really have any other option, so we thought we would try it out. But then the weather forecast wasn't actually looking that good, so we decided we would head out to Tsawwassen, and if we didn't think it was warm enough, we would just head to a park instead.

Conor and Finn going down a REALLY slow kids slide.

After Conor and I got home from church he took care of the kids while I packed for the waterslides AND the park. And honestly, leaving Abbotsford I was sure we would just be going to the park, because it was freezing in Abbotsford!

When we got to the waterslides, however, there was hardly any clouds in the sky, and just a slight breeze, so we decided on the waterslides.

My evaluation of Splashdown? Not the greatest ever... the actually slides were not good (I almost got stuck on one of them twice, not very thrilling!), BUT the tube rides were GREAT! There was one just regular tube one, and then two black hole ones (so you can't see as you go down), and one of those ones is a double where you go down on a tube that has two seats... great fun!!

Finn didn't love the slides much, mainly because the water was really cold! But once he dried off he had a lot of fun just playing with his cars on the towels and eating all the goodies my mom brought.

Everyone else had a lot of fun, but we couldn't convince mom to go down any of the slides after last year, but she had fun watching the babies, and watching everyone else go down the slides.

Near the end of the day Dan and Kevin went to do one last double tube ride and when they got back Kevin said that the last ride had made his whole day. They were going down the slide and you can usually hear the person who went before you, but something was different this time, because instead of the sound ending as the person finished the ride, the sound was getting closer, until they finally heard "I'M NOT MOVING! I'M NOT MOVING!!"

Elle hanging out in shade

The two guys that were ahead of them flipped over and the other guy must have continued down the slide, but the second guy was under his tube and wasn't moving. Collision was inevitable. So as they got closer, Dan who was in the front, tucked in his legs so that he wouldn't kick the guy in the head, they hit him though and made their way down. Whoops!!

Elle - One Month Old

Elle is one month old today!

I won't get into how it feels like I was just in the hospital yesterday, but how it feels like she's been around forever at the same time.

Elle is a great baby. She started off very sleepy, and slept most of the day and night away, but would still eat decently. She's still eating great. Usually every 2-3 hours, but sometimes more often, and sometimes she'll go a little longer as well. Her isn't in too much of a routine yet when it comes to sleep, which is kind of driving me crazy (as I LOVE routines), but we're getting there.

Another pic from the "photoshoot"... she was pretty upset, so I took some of her with her soother.

Usually she wakes up around 730 or 830 am to eat and then stays awake for awhile. Then she falls asleep around 11 or so, which means she either wakes up just as Finnian is going down for his 1:30 nap, or else was already awake but not tired yet. Kind of frustrating for me, because then I don't always get a nap, but Conor's usually good at taking her or looking after Finn so I can sleep at some point.

At night she has a bad habit of waking up around 9pm and then fussing until 12 or beyond. The last couple nights, though, she has gone into her bassinet between 10-11pm and then being out for the night (not including waking to eat, but she's good at going right back to bed afterwards)

I guess that's all to talk about at one month - all she does is eat, sleep and poop.

Oh yeah, THANKFULLY she is no longer pooping during EVERY feeding (or more).

Defiance

This is the new face of defiance.

It's name is Finnian.

It likes to throw it's toys.

Run screaming when you call for him.

Slam the door in your face when you say no.

Throw it's plate of dinner on the floor.

And just cause you to want to pull your hair out about 10 hours of the waking day.

But he's pretty cute!

Real clothes

It took me awhile, but before Elle was born I found a simple, all white dress for Elle for when we get her baptized. But then she was born early, and we don't want to wait too long, but I was afraid the dress would be too big.

It's a summer dress, so it doesn't have any sleeves, so this morning I was looking through clothes I had for her to see if I had a long sleeve onsie that could go underneath. I found one and put the little dress on, it's a big, but for baptism it will work.

After I took the dress off I looked to see if I had any little pants for her that wouldn't be too big, and I found a cute little polka dot pair, and white shoes that looked like they would stay on.... so for the first day in her life she wore real clothes instead of a sleeper.

She is precious!

After dinner today we went up to the field with a little soccer ball and football that I bought at superstore. On the way home we saw a deer in front of the house!

40 Weeks - just for fun!

How far along: 40 weeks - but actually 3.5 weeks old

Size of baby: Not sure how much she weighs, maybe over 7 pounds now?

Total weight gain/loss: I'll say I'm 160 now, I usually am just over or just under - so I'm down almost 15 pounds! hehe

Maternity Clothes: Yes actually, I'm still wearing some maternity clothes... the ones that were more stretchy, therefore fit small as well as big. The main reason is because they are LONG, I'm now accustomed to longer shirts that it feels weird to wear my pre-mat shirts that weren't as long, although they do actually fit. I can't fit into my pre-mat jeans yet though.. but I can wear them with the belly band... and some skirts that were too big for me before now fit :)

Gender: IT'S A GIRL!!!

Movement: I don't feel any movement in my tummy anymore, but I guess that's a good thing since the baby isn't in there anymore!!

Sleep: For some reason I'm waking a lot more in the night now than I did when I was pregnant... wonder why that is???

Cravings: Um, sleep!

Symptoms: Suddenly I have no pregnancy symptoms!

Best moment of the week: Everytime I feed, kiss, hug, hold my baby :) And watching Finn interact with Elle... just a minute ago he asked "more baby Elle?" because she is downstairs napping.

My friend

I meant to post about this a long time ago, and forgot in the midst of pregnancy and new baby...

In the fall of last year I started noticing a friend of mine, Melissa, seemed a bit "off". I didn't see her very often, just at girls nights, and talked to her on facebook.

When we went back to Italy I had a few conversations on facebook with her, and it was getting very difficult to communicate with her. Everything she would say to me was really confusing and a bit discombobulated. Eventually we couldn't carry on a conversation at all, I was a little worried to be honest.

One day I saw her online and asked how she was, and she replied later on that she was pregnant (she already has three kids) and so I congratulated her. Later that day her husband responded to the email telling me that she was not pregnant.

I was confused, so I read on. My friend, 29 years old, mother of 3 young kids, had recently been diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gerhigs Disease) AND FTD (early onset Alzheimer's).

Neither of these have a cure.

I'm devastated for the family... I can't even imagine what they are going through with this.

My friend needs pretty much constant supervision, which means her parents or her husbands parents are always there, to be with her, AND to look after the kids.

If you are at all interested in learning more about her situation, or helping out the family financially, there is a facebook group and a blog set up, which I have linked below.

Facebook Group

Blog

Out and about

Monday was BC day, and Conor deemed it my day as well. I don't quite know what that meant, but I had been making him feel guilty for getting to go to soccer every Wednesday night, as well as going golfing twice last week. Oh, and I was complaining about not getting out for walks or anything because of all the mosquitos out here.

So Monday morning we started off by going to visit Conor's grannie and papa. Papa got a pacemaker put in on Friday, so he's back home recovering. Afterwards I dropped Conor and Finn off at the park at Mill Lake and Elle and I went to the grocery store to get some lunch stuff and then went back to the park to have a little picnic. After we were done eating I put Elle in the hug-a-bub and we walked around Mill Lake. It was really nice out, and it wasn't too busy. Finn was pretty upset when we didn't let him go to the waterpark, or back to the playground afterwards, but he survived!

Baby Elle in the hug-a-bub

We got home for naptime and he spent 2 hours reading in his bed and talking and singing instead of sleeping!

The next morning I ventured out on my own with Finn and Elle for the first time, other than just going to my moms. There was a bit of shopping I wanted to do, so I brought the hug-a-bub again, and Finn got to go in buggies... he LOVES going in buggies! Elle is so cute and snuggly in the wrap.

Finnian, Elle and I at Mill Lake

Today I took Finn and Elle to a park near my moms place. It's a nice park because it's shady, and it's not too open so I didn't have to be worried about Finn getting away on me. Also it's NOT busy at all, we didn't see anyone else the whole time we were there.

The "I loath mosquitos" club

Anyone else want to join this group?

Everytime we think that they are dying off they come back with a vengance! And poor Finnian is taking the brunt of it.

I love her!

If he gets any on his feet or legs, it's game over. Especially at night... he wakes up and just cries and cries because they are bothering him. He pretty much can't go outside at all, because most of the bites he's been getting are just from the mosquitos that get in the house, I can't imagine what they would be like if we actually went outside for a walk with him!

But, this is affecting me as well, because then I'm not getting outside. I don't even want to go out on the deck because I feel kind of quilty leaving him inside.

Finally tonight I couldn't take it anymore, I needed some fresh air. So I took Elle out in the stroller (she has had a couple of bites herself, but they don't seem to bother her much at all, so I wasn't too worried about a little walk), while Conor stayed in with Finn.

We weren't even out for 30 minutes, but it felt so nice to go for a walk and get some fresh air. It also felt great to walk for 30 minutes and not be tired out, as I had been before Elle was born (being pregnant and all tires you out!)... I think on the nights that Conor bathes Finn, I'll take Elle out for a walk then, so that I don't have to feel guilty about Finnian not being able to come.

I had to take quick pics otherwise the mosquitos were going to take us away!