Here's a little family album

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It is amazing to see how much your children change from year to year. Our sweetest Emma just celebrated her 8th birthday. In passed years, I have busily made preparations, helping guide birthday themes and coming up with appropriate decorations and homemade cakes to fit these themes.

This year Emma was much more involved in the planning. Ever since she received a china tea cup and saucer from her Mémère Anne-Marie last summer, she was determined to have a tea party for her birthday. She took to my Pinterest account, scouring the very many ideas and pinning those she liked. It was so much fun to see her so involved and interested in the planning of her birthday beyond the theme.

She chose what kind of cake she wanted, what kind of treats she wanted to be served, and even helped prep before the party started. During the party, she was the most gracious hostess, making sure her friends had enough to eat and refilling the tea cups as needed. She was in charge, such a great shift and it's wonderful to see how much she's grown up. She's no longer a little girl, she is now a little lady and I couldn't be happier that she is my precious daughter.

"I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
As long as I'm living
my baby you'll be." 

-Robert Munsch

*photo courtesy of Tony Bonomo

It's been a while...

A lot of things can happen in a year. I can not believe I have procrastinated so long that more than a year has gone by since my last post! Lucas, of course, recovered really well from his infection. He's been a pretty healthy boy ever since then, we are very lucky that way. Since my last post we have done and experienced so much. We went to Cuba last April. What a great experience that was! We all had such a great time. Cuba is a beautiful country, not only physically but through its people as well. I have never met such wonderfully nice people before. When you see the poverty that they live in, it is truly inspiring. Despite the US embargo, they do the best with what they have. I wish the US would spend less money trying to squash these people and put more money in helping their own. The US spends millions of dollars every year to continue this embargo, what a waste. Anyway, that's my little rant about that. The kids had a blast on the trip, they keep wanting to know when we'll be able to go back :)

That was, I would say, definitely the highlight of our year. There is much more to post, but I will start with that for now.

A hospital stay

The first couple of weeks of November have definitely proved to be interesting and memorable. Everything actually started before Halloween, with Lucas having a low grade fever the Friday evening before Halloween. On Saturday morning Lucas seemed to be doing okay, we brought Emma and Xavier to dance class, in their costumes and then headed over to Momstown Winnipeg's Boo Bash. Lucas was a little clingy to daddy, but really did enjoy himself. By Saturday evening, Lucas' fever spiked up really high, so we decided to stay close to home. Monday morning I called the pediatrician's office and talked to the head nurse. Listing his symptoms combined to the fact that he is 18 months old, she assumed he was coming down with baby measles, if his fever had not broken by the next morning and spots had not appeared, we were to call back.
As it was Halloween, I had made arrangements to go over to my mom's place. My sister would come out with me and the older two while Lucas stayed behind. That was the plan. When Lucas saw we were going out without him, he was not impressed. I took him out for about a block or so before heading back to my mom's place with him.
It's important to note, Lucas had not once pulled or tugged at his ear. He was irritable, cranky, had trouble sleeping, hardly was eating anything and was not wanting to drink either. If he had been tugging at his ear, I would have brought him in, instead we waited.
Tuesday morning arrives and poor little Lucas has a fever of 39.8 C, his left eye also has a pinkish mark around it. I called the peds office and she arranged for us to see the substitute pediatrician in the morning. He was diagnosed with an angry ear infection, which surprised me since he not once tugged or pulled at his ears. He was also slightly dehydrated. We needed to concentrate giving him liquids and not worry about solids. He was prescribed amoxicillin and a follow up for Thursday was scheduled.
On Wednesday morning Lucas's eye was swollen shut. Since the doctor had seen him on Tuesday and was doing a follow-up on Thursday, I decided to google his symptoms. Let me just say this, google does not have all the answers. From what I could find, the answers seemed to be either he was rubbing his eye too much or it was an allergic reaction. Since we started giving Lucas Advil on Monday as per the nurses advice, I thought maybe it was allergic reaction and I stopped giving him advil. I wasn't terribly worried since we had a follow up on Thursday and both the doctor and nurse had seen his eye on Tuesday.
Thursday morning I debated going to a planned event. I felt Lucas seemed to be doing alright, so we decided to go, everything seemed to go well, other than having a swollen eye. Oh and I was also positive he didn't have pink eye, because his actual eye ball seemed completely unaffected.
Afternoon rolls around and I head over to the doctors with Lucas. The waiting room was packed and there were about 5 people ahead of us just to get registered! As I'm waiting with Lucas, the nurse comes with a big smile on her face and asks: "How is Lucas doing?" When I turn him around to face her, her expression completed changed and mentioned she needed to find us a room right away, since we weren't registered yet we had to wait. I could see the nurse pacing waiting for us to be registered, when we were getting registered I hardly had time to put my medical card back in my wallet when the nurse called out "room 5". That's the quickest we've ever been shown to a room in this clinic! The doctor came into the room almost right away. He took one look at Lucas and diagnosed him with cellulitis, a bacterial infection. He said I had two choices, he could prescribe an antibiotic but it could take a couple of weeks for the infection to go away or bring him to Children's Hospital where they would administer medication intravenously and we would see results right away. He strongly suggested the hospital route and since I didn't want to see my little boy suffer for two extra weeks for this, I agreed with him. While the doctor called Children's to let them know we were coming, the nurse photocopied all his notes. My sister was just finishing her shift in the Heart Failure Clinic upstairs, so she drove Lucas and I (using our van) to Children's so I wouldn't have to leave our van there and was able to bring it back home for me.
We went in through the Children's emergency, let them know why we were there and handed over the doctor's photocopied notes. They took Lucas's vitals and whisked us to an isolation room, because the ER was full. A few different nurses and med students came in and finally home of the ER docs. She gave us the choice of being admitted or come in as an outpatient a couple of times per day while still having an intravenous tube, but all bandaged up while at home. The outpatient works better on an older patient, they find it more traumatic on the little ones to be an outpatient, so I decided that we get admitted. After a little while we were put in a room in the ER where Lucas was able to watch cartoons, but also received his IV tube, let's just say he wasn't a very happy camper. The ER attending came in and within about 15 minutes we were brought up to our room.
The first night was a little rough, Lucas fell asleep sometime after 9pm and it took me much longer. He woke up at around 3am and partied until close to 5am. Richard arrived at the hospital sometime after 9am with Xavier and we switched off. Xavier and I rushed back home so that I could have a shower and some breakfast before E arrived to be babysat for the day, and boy, I just made it under the gun. I had my final homework (worth 40%) of my final mark due that day, I was planning on working on it the night Lucas was admitted to the hospital, so I had to put a fire under my butt and really get it done! Luckily the boys had preschool and I was able to finish typing everything up and sending it in just under the wire. As soon as E was picked up for the day (Emma was already home from school) we went straight to the hospital to meet up with Lucas (who had switched rooms) and Richard. Lucas seemed to be doing better. We discovered the Ronald McDonald Family Room which is awesome, they had a big screen TV, toys for the kids, colours and paper for them to draw on, there is a kitchen where you can get milk, juice, you can make your own food and it in the dining area, there are always homemade treats being baked by the volunteers and internet access, the place was wonderful. A good break. This second night went a bit better and both Lucas and I slept better. By Saturday, Lucas's eye seemed to swell up a little bit again, so the doctor decided to change his medication to something a bit stronger, so instead of having a syringe full of med being put into his IV for 3 minutes, he was now being hooked up to a machine for 45 minutes or so. It didn't take long to notice that this medication had a better effect. During the afternoon Gen came to pick up Emma and Xavier so they could go to Xavier W's birthday party. On Saturday night Richard convinced me to let him stay overnight, it was a hard decision to make but Emma and Xavier really wanted to me to come home with them. I cried all the way home and Xavier kept asking why I was so sad. sigh. Needless to say both kids slept with me that night. As soon as everyone was awake, we quickly dressed, rushed to McD's for take-out breakfast and straight to the hospital. Apparently at 5am, when they went to give Lucas his medication, his IV came out, they tried to put it in his right hand, but it didn't work, so finally they put it in his right arm, poor little guy. I felt even worse about leaving the little guy, at least though Richard was with him.
Since Sunday was my birthday, my family decided to meet up with us in the Ronald McDonald Family Room and have some take out Boston Pizza for supper. Lucas slept through almost the entire time the were there. Little guy. Finally by Monday we were able to get released from the hospital with a prescription for more meds to be given orally. He has been doing better, there is still a dark mark under his eye, but the doctor said that was normal and should go away within the next couple of weeks. He has had a bit of a mild fever yesterday and today, so who knows if we really are out of the woods.

Bumpy beginnings

Xavier had a terrible time adjusting to our new rhythm of life these past couple of weeks. With E coming four days a week as part of our daycare family it was almost like bringing home a new baby. He seemed afraid that he was losing his "spot". He had quite a few melt downs the first week and the stress caused him to regress by having a few "accidents" and wetting the bed a few times each week. It was eye opening to me and I had to pull out my bag of parental tricks to help him realise he just as important as he's always been and we love him just the same.
Add to all this the fact that Emma, his BFF, started kindergarten, let's just say it's been a challenge. He is much better now. The things that did help, is that E is a pretty laid back kid, phew, and he started going to preschool. He missed his preschool teacher over the summer and going back into her class (even though the physical classroom has changed) has given some stability back into his life.
Emma, on her side, LOVES going to school and going on the bus. In fact she loves taking the bus so much, she refuses to come back with us in the car when I go to pick up Xavier and E from preschool. Luckily we get home a full 20 minutes before the bus which gives us leeway when everybody's in snowsuits.
Xavier misses Emma so much that he will actually run out the door and jump into Emma's arms when she gets off the bus. So incredibly cute! Lucas is also very happy to see his big sister come home.
I love how excited Emma is to tell me all about her day, I've already learnt three new songs and one new dance from her already =) I hope this excitement follows her through until the end of her university studies, hehe.
Lucas has really been enjoying his 2.5, 3 days a week, of one on one time. He's such a cutie. Although I don't mind doing errands and grocery shopping with my whole gang, I love it when I can go with just Lucas. He's so cute in the store and such a flirt.

New beginnings

We are already in the month of September and this time next week Emma will have completed her first full day of kindergarten, a big milestone in the life of a young child.
This month seems to be full of new and exciting beginnings.
Emma will transform from a little caterpillar until a beautiful butterfly as she ventures into the new world of school.
Xavier will be entering into pre-school, three times a week, venturing to make new friends and get his caterpillar ready for its chrysalis.
Lucas will discover life with just Maman three days a week and of course continue to grow, learning new things, new words.
Another new beginning the unofficial start my daycare! I don't have my licence yet, but I am able to take care of four children including my own until I get my licence! This means the new official member of our daycare family will be starting on Tuesday. I am very excited about this. Emma fully understands that E will be part of our daycare family and will be here four times a week, the boys not so much. Whenever I tell Xavier that E will be here four days a week, he asks why? LOL. I am sure the beginning will be a little rough, but hopefully I can plan enough activities and crafts to keep them busy.
Keeping on the daycare vine, the basement is starting to take shape, which has gotten me really excited. All the walls are primed and one has a first coat of paint. Once we get all the paint up, next comes the flooring. It's all coming together. Good things come to those who wait and new beginnings.

Fun in the sun

We definitely have had a busy but fun summer. Part of that is because of this great new moms group that has formed recently in Winnipeg calleds Momstown Winnipeg. We've had car wash play dates, tonnes of stroller walks, play dates at the new Nature Playground in Assiboine Park, an outing to tinkertown and even an outing just for moms!
This group is so good for me and for the kids.
It gets us out of the house doing things with other people. Hopefully it will also garner some friendships for the kiddies and for me. I am definitely in need of expanding my social circle. I am so insecure with myself, however, I am constantly afraid of doing or saying something wrong. Gah! I need to learn to relax and try to convince myself I'm someone that other people can/do like. Why is this so hard? I always wonder how making friends seem to be so easy for other people.
I just need to relax.
How did this blog about fun in the sun turn into my self esteem issues? LOL. I was thinking of deleting that part, but I've decided to leave it on here as a reminder to myself.
Let's get back to topic. I really love picnics and thankfully this summer we've managed to have a picnic every week. Some were more organised, other were thrown together last minute and one was just me alone with the kids in the park, literally. Every single one of them was well worth it. It's so much fun hanging out at the park with the kids.
We've made it to the beach once this year, better than none last year, hopefully next year there will be more trips to the beach though! However, it's not totally lost for this year, even though tomorrow is September 1. EGADS! 9 more days and Emma reaches another milestone: kindergarten! I have mixed feelings about this one :-S
We did spend some time earlier this month at the CanadInns. The kids had a blast, we spent most of the time in the pool, a lot of times we were the only ones there! Xavier hardly swam though, he just going on the slide! LOL! What a guy. He will definitely be my daredevil.
All of these activities however, have hampered my concentration on my homework, so I really need to kick my butt and get my homework done for the end of next week. (that's my personal deadline). We'll see how things go!