Photo Shoot

A talented friend of mine came to take pictures of Emerson at our place three days after she was born.  She also took pictures of Caleb a few years ago-- check out this post.  The pictures of Emerson and the rest of our family turned out so great, that I thought I should share them with you all!

Here are a few of my favorites...

If you're interested in checking out more of my friend's work, you can take a look at her facebook page:

Anj Peters Photography

Happy Face

So as I'm trying to capture this moment with a picture I ask Caleb to act normal...

Here's what I get.

He calls this his happy face.

Much better.

Give Emerson a kiss?  That I can do.  Act normal and smile?  Not a chance.

I'm back!

As you can imagine, life has been a bit busier than usual around here... Hence the week long break from this blog.

Where do I start?  I know that some of you are die hard labor story fans... without sharing all the gory details (this is a blog for people of all ages and genders) I'll give you a brief summary...

The day after my due date I woke up with contractions-- had them off and on for most of the day but didn't pay too much attention to them as I figured it could easily be false labor.  Went to bed that night... water broke at midnight-- started to have more intense contractions.  Doug called the hospital at around 1:00 am and they wanted me to come in immediately since this birth was going to be a vbac (if you don't know what that means, you probably won't be interested in the rest of this paragraph so feel free to scroll down) and they needed to monitor me and the baby closely.  Went in, even though contractions were irregular at times they still admitted me so that everything could be carefully monitored.  And then we spent the rest of the night and morning making it through one contraction at a time-- not fun.  By the time the morning rolled around, I was tired (didn't get a wink of sleep that night) and not enjoying contractions  so my nurse offered me the gas-- I accepted.  As I start puffing away, Doug asks the nurse if she's ever seen the gas make a woman in labor start laughing-- only once before, she says.  Now she can say she's seen two...  I sucked that gas back like my life depended on it, and at times broke out into uncontrollable fits of laughter during contractions. Doug quite enjoyed this part.  By noon, I wasn't laughing anymore.  Labor sucks.  I had been in labor for 12 hours but wasn't making any progress.  So, even though it can be risky for a vbac, my doctor decided to give me oxytocin to try and speed things up.  As she was telling me about the oxytocin, my doctor suggested an epidural, as the oxytocin at that stage in the game was going to make things pretty intense, and they didn't know how long the day was going to be.  I told them to call the anesthesiologist.  They started the oxytocin drip, things got intense as promised, anesthesiologist arrived an hour later (he was stuck in another procedure).  At that point I was mad at him-- couldn't understand why it was taking so darn long to get it started... worst part of the entire day... having to sit still while they started the epidural.  And 10 minutes after it was in place, I was at 10 cm's and ready to start pushing.  An hour later... Emerson was born.  There were a few crazy moments at the end when they discovered that I'd had a placental abruption (placenta separates from the uterus... blood can't get to the baby, is fatal for the baby if it's not caught in time).  I won't go into the details of what happened as a result of the abruption, but let's just say that it's a good thing Doug has a strong stomach... and that I couldn't see what was happening.  The nurses all told me that it was good that I had gone into labor that day so that it was caught while I was in the hospital.

And that's it!  Within the hour I was up and out of bed, took a shower, and felt amazing!  Again, I will say that labor sucks... but Emerson's birth was definitely much easier than last time around.  When Caleb was born three years ago, I was still in the hospital at this point in the game.  While I still have the usual aches and pains, I can't believe how fast the recovery has been.  I would take this over a c section any day!

Now... let me fill you in on the first week at home with 2 kids!!  For the most part, it was great!  Thankfully my parents were around (my mom is still here until the end of this week) and they were able to give Caleb lots of much needed attention.

I think my Dad took Caleb out to Tim Hortons most mornings.  Caleb wanted to get there at the crack of dawn to make sure he got the "white" donuts (strawberry filled timbits covered in powdered sugar) before the other children took them all.

And here's my parents with their two grandchildren.  Caleb sure loves Papa and Nana... and I'm sure Emerson will too!

Emerson has enjoyed her beautiful room.  She's sure loving her sleep... I can't seem to get that girl to stay awake!  Doug went to put Emerson to bed the first night and totally cracked up when he saw how small she was in her crib.  He decided to take a picture to document the moment...  

Emerson has spent many mornings and afternoons sleeping in the bassinet we keep in the living room... every once and a while she decides to wake up and entertain us.

Caleb has had a pretty interesting week adjusting to life with his new baby sister.  He doesn't seem to mind having Emerson around (even though he was disappointed that he didn't get the baby brother he was hoping for), but is noticing that he doesn't get the same amount of attention.  This has resulted in the occasional temper tantrum.  So, Doug and I have made an effort to get him out of the house with either one or both of us apart from Emerson when we have a few minutes and someone to watch our baby girl.  We've gone for slurpees, to the spray park, out to Tim Hortons... it's seemed to help.  We've also noticed that Caleb seems to more readily enjoy getting attention from strangers when he's in a public setting-- he's become quite the entertainer.  The other day Doug took him along on a trip to Safeway.  Caleb went on to sing the song "Hi... my name is Joe..." over and over again at the top of his lungs-- down the aisles, in the checkout line-- to the amusement of everyone else in the store.

And on occasion, I catch him enjoying his role as big brother.  The other day I walked into the living room to find him "playing" with Emerson-- which means that he was loading her bassinet up with toys.

We managed to get out of the house a few times throughout the week.  My mom took off for a few days to the island... so on Friday night we decided to go on a family adventure.  We made a trip to Ikea (I needed to pick up a few items for my next project... don't worry, I'll show you what I'm up to soon!) and stopped at the mall on the way home.  Emerson got to wear "real" clothes for her first big adventure out of the house.

In the car on the way there, Caleb was quite annoyed with the sun in his eyes.  I finally gave him Doug's hat to wear so that he could cover his eyes.  Amazingly, he sat in his seat with the hat covering his face like this for probably half an hour-- didn't make a peep.

And on Monday I had quite the mommy success... during Caleb's morning snack I managed to convince him that dried apricots (he calls them africots) were an really special treat.  He ate tons of them like candy.  Later on that night, I told him we could have a special picnic snack because he had been such a big help cleaning up the living room.  I gave him three snack options... one-- dried apricots and crackers, two-- ice cream (that's what I was hoping for) or three-- a cookie.  He chose the dried apricots :)

Here we are having a picnic snack in the living room.

Well, that's it for today!  More pictures to come soon...

Emerson Lily

We're home from the hospital... with our new baby girl!  Emerson Lily was born on August 21st at 2:52 pm-- she weighed in at 7 lbs 13 ounces, is 20 inches long, with super long legs and huge feet :)  She's super cute!  Here's a few pictures of our little girl...

That's it for tonight folks!  I'm gonna enjoy sleeping in my own bed tonight!!

Let's continue... shall we?

The next stop on the tour leads to our room.  It was ugly, it was dark, and it was painted  a strange shade of purplish brown-- which when combined with blue/grey stained carpet, was... interesting.

All three upstairs bedroom are not very big-- when selecting which room would be ours we simply chose the one that felt biggest and had the nicest closet, which unfortunately is now NOT the nicest closet-- check this one out.  Trust me, I've got big plans for my closet-- one day we'll get around to it.  The room gets very little natural light which made it feel pretty dark and depressing... not exactly what I was going for.  So, as we began to renovate and redecorate the room, I tried to make selections that would help the room to feel bright, clean, and fresh.

As we did in all of the other rooms, the first step was to paint when we moved in.  This tour has already taken us on quite a journey of color-- first purple, then orange, now brown.  Wait till' you see what's next-- it will knock your socks off :)  Now, it's not that I don't like color-- I actually love it!  I just felt that painting this house in more subtle colors would allow it to feel brighter, bigger, and give it a more cohesive look from room to room.  Instead I've added accessories in bright and fun colors that can be changed and edited with the season.  I chose to paint this room a really pale, subtle, shade of blue that has grey/green undertones that make it almost feel like a warm color.  Not that you'd be able to tell from the terrible picture below...

Let me tell you... pulling carpet up in an older house is like going on an archeology dig-- you never know what you're going to discover... and sometimes it makes you love your house just a little bit less.  Once again in this room, we ripped up the carpet to discover more lino!  If we were just putting laminate into one room, it wouldn't be necessary to rip it out.  But since we were installing it throughout the main floor, we had to make sure that we had one even, level surface to work with (which led to many nights of scraping /peeling up lino and spreading a leveling agent from room to room... so much fun).

Enough of these ugly pictures!  Let's get to the fun ones!  After painting, installing new flooring, and trim, the room looks so much better...

It's a pretty small room... as you can see (there's not really even enough room for two bedside tables) but it still works!  I love how light and bright it feels with the light walls and white bedding.

Now let me tell you about some of my favorite things in this room!  First up... the one bedside table.  This was an old schoolhouse desk from my parent's house.  It was really beat up and the only drawer was missing-- so I sanded it down and stained it really dark while Doug made a new drawer for the desk that matches perfectly-- now there's an inexpensive bedside table for y'all :)

Second favorite part of the room-- the pair of lamps.  I LOVE shopping for lamps.  It could be one of my favorite stops on a trip to Home Sense.  I managed to score this pair on sale at Tarjay... (aka... Target).

And my third favorite thing-- the blue and white print blanket on my bed found in the clearance bin at the Bay.  I randomly found it one day, and as I made my way to the checkout I decided that I wouldn't buy it unless it was under 20 bucks... it was... so it got to come home with me :)  Doug hates "extras" on the bed, so it's my job to fold up the blanket and remove the throw pillows each night.  If not, they end up on the floor.

And finally... my most favorite thing in the room-- the full length mirror that Doug built for the other side of the room!  (Recognize it?  It's already made an appearance on the blog in my pregnancy photos)  When we moved into the house, this mirror (minus the trim around it) was hanging in the upstairs bathroom.  It was a bit chipped around the edges and didn't really fit the space very well.  I took it off immediately and replaced it with another one from a different bathroom in the house when we moved in.  the mirror sat in our garage for almost a year before Doug came up with the bright idea to put it in our room and frame it with some left over architrave moulding from the trim we put up around the doors in our house.  In our home Doug's in charge of the installation while I focus on the details-- filling, sanding, painting.  Doug finished his part several months ago.  My part of this project was only completed a few weeks ago :)

It looks amazing... if I do say so myself!  Great job honey!  The mirror was free (it came with the house) and Doug figures the moulding used to frame it out probably cost between 15 and 20 bucks.  So much cheaper than buying a ready made mirror from the store :)

A close up of the mirror-- please take note of my impressive paint job.  Not an easy task with a large pregnant belly in the way :)

And finally a view out the door into the baby's room.  I expect to be making the trek back and forth between the two rooms quite often in the near future.  A few weeks ago Doug made sure to put WD40 on the hinges of the upstairs bedroom doors to eliminate all potential squeaks-- we're not taking any chances around here with two sleeping kids (hopeful on the sleeping part).  How's that for being prepared!

So there you have it!  A complete tour of room number three.  I can't say it's finished yet-- I've got a few more projects up my sleeve.  Just need to find some time to execute them.  Maybe this weekend?

There are many more rooms to come on the tour of our house, but I can't promise that I'll have time to post about them anytime soon... but you never know... if they let me get to 10 days overdue I may be bored!

DUE DATE!!!

Today is my due date... and I am still as pregnant as ever :)  I saw the doctor today (a new one-- mine is on vacation for the next week or two) and he's pretty confident I will see him next at my scheduled appointment in a week.  My mom agrees... apparently I don't look or act uncomfortable enough to go into labour any time soon.  I'm not too surprised and not really all that disappointed.  In the end, being overdue is a much better problem than having a baby 6.5 weeks early...

So!  Over the next week I will have to come up with a few new projects to stay busy...  If anything changes, I'll keep you posted!

3 good things about yesterday...

1.  My parents arrived... so we had our first full day together!
2.  Decided to declare yesterday Deep Fried Monday-- 2 out of the 3 meals I ate were completely deep fried-- lunch... watermelon and roll kuchen... dinner... fish & chips :)  Not only that, but I decided to spend the afternoon in the pool and successfully deep fried myself.
3.  It was warm enough to... once again... head to White Rock for the evening (obviously that explains number 2-- can't pass up Moby Dick's!!)

Here are a few pictures from our White Rock adventure!

It was a beautiful, warm, sunny evening at the beach.  After chowing down on fish and chips, we decided to cool off in the water for a bit.

Family of three-- Caleb acting like a clown.  Nothing new.  Last night he proved that getting a three year old to stand still and look at a camera is impossible.

Me and my Mom.

Caleb also proved another thing to us that night-- keeping a three year old out of the water is also impossible.  Luckily, I thought to bring a second change of clothes.  Call it a mother's intuition.

And now he's screaming from the water for Papa to come out and play-- really, he just wants to splash anyone and everyone possible.

Preggo Paparazzi strikes again.  I can't go anywhere these days without someone (Doug) snapping my picture or strangers staring.  I did discover something last night though-- if you want to remain inconspicuous, you just need hang around people who draw more attention than you.  While eating my ice cream, we sat next to a wedding party having their pictures taken.  This forced passing strangers into a dilemma-- stare at the fat pregnant lady eating ice cream, or the silly looking wedding party-- most chose the wedding party.

2 days till' Due Date!  I'm guessing that I won't be heading to the hospital any time soon-- bring on more summer adventures!

Guess where we went today...

Anytime I go to a public place or event, I seem to see a lot of pregnant women.  Maybe it's because I go to places that are generally preggo-friendly... or maybe I'm just noticing them more often.  Today I went to a place where pregnant ladies were noticeably absent-- the Abbotsford International Airshow.  I was there for 5 hours, among huge crowds of people, and only saw one other suspiciously pregnant woman.  They all stayed home for good reasons-- it was 35 degrees celsius outside today-- much hotter on the asphalt tarmac (our car read 46 degrees when we crawled back in to head home), there was no shade, no seating, one of the main activities was crawling up ladders into small cockpits, it was super loud... and did I mention it was extremely hot?  Now you're all probably thinking I was dragged there by the boys of this household-- but I actually suggested that we go.  It's our last day to hang out as a family of three (as my family arrives tomorrow and will be staying until the baby arrives) so I thought it would be a great activity for us to do to celebrate this milestone!  And I also knew the boys would love every minute of it :)  So this morning we packed up our cooler, threw our lawn chairs into the car, made a quick stop at Starbucks, and took off for the air show!  Needless to say, Caleb was beside himself with excitement (we only informed him of the plan this morning)-- there was yelling, squealing, pointing, and car seat dancing when we pulled into the grounds.  We parked our car and spent the morning taking in the ground exhibits.

We spent a good part of the morning looking at the Canadian and US Air Force military transport planes.  Most of them were open to the public to tour-- Caleb had quite an awesome time inspecting those planes and meeting the pilots.

If you felt super adventurous, you could wait in an extremely long, hot line and crawl up into the cockpit of these planes.  Were we feeling adventurous?  You bet!  We roasted in those lines... all for a chance to crawl up  steep narrow ladders into tight, even hotter spaces.  Today I decided to forget about the fact that I am 39 and a half weeks pregnant and lugged my pregnant self up the ladders to see those cockpits for myself!  At first I wasn't going to do it, but when I witnessed a fairly large woman (not pregnant) manage to make it to the top I figured, why not?

And if I did happen to go into labour right there on the tarmac, I would have probably been alright.  The place was crawling with military personnel equipped with first aid training (and I did see an ambulance display when we first drove into the grounds)-- I'd be fine.

Look at those boys-- they had so much fun.  Here they were looking slightly warm...  Even in the heat, Caleb did great.  We didn't bring a stroller for him, he spent the day walking around by himself and didn't complain once.  We all did our best to stay hydrated (consuming many bottles of water and multiple juice boxes) and even though we were sweating profusely, we all felt pretty positive about the experience.

We packed a picnic lunch and headed to the main grounds to see the planes in action!!  It was incredibly hot at this point of the day... and dusty, and loud.  Thankfully we thought to bring an umbrella for Caleb to sit under while he ate his lunch.  I did my best to not complain about the heat-- it was my idea to go after all.  We thankfully discovered some misting sprinklers that we could stand under and cool off a bit. In the end, we didn't make it through the whole afternoon-- Caleb asked to go home and was looking so tired that we decided to call it a day.  After a quick dip in the pool and some long naps, we've recovered from our outing.  All in all, it was a fun family adventure!

On the agenda tonight?  Find a place with air conditioning :)