motoring munchkin

Since Josh was about 10 months old, we've been taking him to a local drop-in program called Motoring Munchkins. It's basically a gymnasium full of toys for kids, aged 1 to 5 years, to run around and play. Josh LOVES it. He is such an active child that it's perfect for him!

Since I've been on maternity leave again, I've opted to go to the Wednesday class instead of Fridays, hoping that it may be a bit less crowded since it's the middle of the week. Not only is it less crowded, but they also have gymnastics equipment set up for the gymnastics classes that take place later in the day.

All the gymnastics stuff is new to Josh and he is enjoying it quite a bit. He runs around, going from equipment to equipment, testing it all out. His big thing right now is hanging. He learned to hang on the uneven bars and now he'll hang on just about anything - which isn't always good when he can pull over bookshelves and tables at home!

He also loves to jump, but what child doesn't?! And we've found that he's pretty good at walking on the balance beam too!

See what I mean about hanging on anything?!

I forget the name of these riding wheelie things, but you can get them at Costco

Josh likes to build stuff, just like Dad!

Josh jump, jump, jumps right onto a mat at the end

Not only can he balance on the balance beam...

...but he can jump off too!

Butt shot

Who doesn't like the trampoline?!

50d

Brian has wanted a digital SLR for probably as long as I've known him. We've always found reasons not to get one though, citing price as our biggest hurdle. Brian has patiently (and painfully) watched as, slowly, each one of our friends has upgraded from their point and shoot cameras or 35mm SLR's and bought a digital SLR. Each time, I watch Brian's reaction and my heart sinks as I can taste his mixed emotions of envy and reality (that we can't afford it!).

We recently "found" some money and we (read "I") decided that it was time to bite the bullet and get a DSLR. Brian did a bit of research and he decided on the Canon 50D. I have to admit, not knowing anything about cameras, that it is pretty amazing! Even I can take a few good pictures with that camera. But then again, I guess it better be pretty damn good for the price!

Here are some of the first photos we've taken with the camera:

mommy's day

I still find it weird to talk about my "kids". I can't believe that someone saw fit for me to be the mother of 2 kids! These first 4 weeks have been quite an experience having 2 kids, but they have been lots of fun - very different than my experience as a first-time parent! I'm sad that I didn't enjoy Josh as much as a newborn - I was too "post-partum" to enjoy the experience. But I think I've made up for it with Avery.

Brian and the "kids" gave me the BEST mother’s day gift that I think any mom (of a newborn) could ask for. They gave me 6 hours of continuous sleep! It was SO nice. Avery has been strictly breastfeeding and the night before Mom's Day, I pumped instead and Brian gave her the milk, bottled, at her 4am feeding. I got to sleep from 1am to 7am without waking up AT ALL! Brian said she did really well on the bottle – she finished everything that I pumped in about 15 minutes. I was SO happy to hear that and SO happy to feed her at 7am, feeling a tad bit engorged! Hahaha...

It's funny how quickly we adapt because when I woke up, I didn't feel like I had been sleeping for 6 hours. In fact, I felt like I could sleep for 6 more hours! But through the day, I felt like I had energy and I didn't need to take any naps! I'm SO looking forward to the days when I'm getting 6 hours of continuous sleep again...!

We had a really nice Mother's Day. Josh gave me my Mother's Day gift in the morning and said, "Happy Birthday". Hahaha...He also gave my mom her Grammy's Day gift. We all went for dimsum in the late morning and then we spent the gorgeous afternoon outside doing some gardening. In the late afternoon, Nana came over too, so Josh and Avery got to spend their Mom's Day with their mom and both their grandma's. It was perfect!

I hope all you moms had a fabulous Mother's Day. You are ALL my heroes. I don't know any work that is harder than being a mother. I know that even though it's worth it, it sometimes seems like an unappreciated effort. Well, just remember that EVERY OTHER mom appreciates what you do (and, eventually, your kids will appreciate it too!). Happy Mother's Day!

one month

This past Sunday was a milestone first Mother's Day with Avery. Also, it was Avery's 4 week birthday! I can't believe that the first month has gone by already! She looks so different now then those first days in the hospital. For one, she is no longer yellow - she seems to have worked out all her jaundice. I'm glad she didn't have to go through phototherapy!

She also does not look like a newborn anymore. She is filling out and probably weighs around 9 lbs. now! I don't know her exact weight because I'm finding that the second time around, the health care professionals are relying on our experience to get us through the first few weeks. It seemed like we weighed Josh every other day until he was 4 weeks old! With Avery, she was weighed in the hospital and then at one week and three weeks. That's it so far. At 3 weeks old, she weighed 8.5 lbs. She's a little porker!

So, with 2 kids, we're finding that bathtime comes few and far between (for both kids!). The following photos are of Avery's first bath at home. Brian was a little rusty and Avery was new at it too, so between the two of them it was a bit of a clumsy endeavour and Avery was NOT happy...


These first few weeks have found Avery sleeping alot - sleep, eat, poo, she's pretty textbook! She is just now staying awake more and we're finding that we need to start using some of our parenting skills to find ways to get her to fall asleep. It's funny how quickly we forget all that stuff! Now that she's awake more, we're seeing her grey-black eyes and we can tell that she's focusing more. She's even given a couple of non-gassy smiles when she's looking at us!

We've also discovered that she has a REALLY loud cry. We're not used to that because Josh was so quiet as a newborn. It's a bit nerve-wracking. I never realized how much a baby's cry can really grate on your nerves until now. I mean, I don't feel like I'm going to have a nervous breakdown everytime she cries, but it is distracting and I find that I can't do anything BUT tend to her cries when she's crying.

Josh is loving his little sister. Everytime he comes home from daycare or goes to bed, he wants to give Avery a hug and kiss. We just have to make sure that we watch him like a hawk - his idea of a gentle hug and kiss is not quite as "gentle" as we'd like! We also had a "close call" last week - I was sitting on the couch beside Avery in her bassinet when Josh crawled up on the couch between us. I knew he was leaned over looking at her, but I wasn't fully paying attention to what he was doing. Soon, Avery started crying so I leaned over to see what Josh was doing. That's when I noticed 2 pieces of cashew in her mouth! OMG - it just proved to me that you can NEVER be too careful when dealing with a toddler!

Here are more photos of Avery over the last few weeks. The last one was taken on her 4-week birthday:

Meet Avery Sandra Van Dop

All I can say is OMG. We were definitely not expecting this! OK, OK, we knew that a baby was coming eventually - maybe around the end of the month. But Avery Sandra Van Dop decided to grace us with her presence three weeks early. She was born on Sunday, April 12th, 2009 at 10:43pm in St. Paul's Hospital, Vancouver, BC, weighing in at 3205 grams and measuring 50 cm. The funniest moment was when we were admitted into the hospital and met up with our mid-wife for the first time - Brian asked her, "Are we really doing this today?!". Hahaha...and I have a feeling this will be the first of many surprises that this little girl gives us!

The painful details (literally!)?! I was in labour approximately 22 hours before the obstetrician decided that Avery's heart rate was too high and she needed to come out right away. In a way, this was better than the 40 hours I laboured with Josh before I ended up with a C-section. But, for some reason, it seemed MUCH more painful this time around! I was stuck at 4cm dilated for most of the labour (about 19 hours) and then after I surrendered to the epidural, I dilated to 7cm in an hour! The drug doctor is a labouring woman's best friend, I tell ya! That was around the point where it was decided that Avery needed to come out ASAP. As an aside, when the obstetrician did a final exam on the OR table, I was 9 cm dilated. I was almost able to push this baby out!

We're so relieved that the obstetrician made the call when she did because when Avery came out, they said her "tone" wasn't normal. She was floppy and it took them about 8 minutes to get her to a normal tone. I also remember that she was pretty quiet - her little "wah" noises were not the usual newborn wailings. In the 8 minutes that she was on the warming bed, she developed a fever, so the paediatrician decided that she should go to the NICU for observation and possible tests.

Brian stayed with her while the doctors finished working on me before taking me to recovery. When I came out of recovery, they took me to Brian and Avery in the NICU. They said they thought she might have had an infection, but the blood test looked normal and her temperature was coming down, so they decided she didn't need any anti-biotics. By the time they got me into my room and settled in, she was brought to us to stay. We were VERY relieved and VERY exhausted!

I STILL can't stop staring at our beautiful little girl. Partly because I know this is the last time we will go through this and partly because she is JUST SO CUTE! Just like Josh, we are having feeding issues and she has developed jaundice, but we are still taking it one day at a time and doing the best we can.

Josh is taking things quite well right now. I think it was harder for me to adjust to sharing my love for my 2 children! This C-section hit me hardest the first time I saw Josh and he wanted me to lift him up. I realized I won't be able to lift him up for the next 6 to 8 weeks. I'm trying to get down to "his level" but that is also hard 5 days after major surgery.

So, despite all this, Josh is reacting amazing! I think alot of it has to do with our guardian angel - Josh's Nana. Brian's mom has been our saviour through all this! I'm not sure what we would have done without her! We had originally asked her to help us if this baby came early (before my parents arrive on April 21st!), but then Brian's dad got sick (which is a COMPLETELY different story!) and we scrambled to find a back-up plan.

Well, Brian's mom reassured us that she would still be able to help us and she has done MORE than just help us! She has not only taken care of Josh when we needed it, but she is also taking care of us. It's amazing to see her in action and I am SO grateful and SO completely indebted. Thanks so much, Mom. We love you!

Thanks, too, to everyone for the food, gifts, emails, phone calls and visits. It really shows us how much we are loved by our family and friends. We can't wait for all of you to meet Avery! In the meantime, here are some photos of Avery's first few hours and days...

Avery Sandra Van Dop

Avery with Mommy and Daddy

Daddy's little girl

EVERYONE is exhausted (check out the background!)

The Van Dop Family

Nana meets Avery for the first time

Mom gets to hold her 2 kids

Who's the patient - Joshie or Mommy?!

Beautiful baby girl - home at last!

Nikita and Avery meet

Joshie gets a good look at his baby sister

21 days

We got our new couches 21 days ago. It was a momentous occasion to be rid of the 35-year old couches, of which we have a picture of Brian sitting on them when he was 9-years old!

We were glad to be rid of the old couches because they were out-dated, tattered and falling apart, BUT they were the most comfortable couches EVER! So, we had VERY high expectations from our new couches.

Brian enlisted Patrick's help (thanks, Patrick!) to get the couches in the house and on our initial setup, we were discouraged. The couches were MUCH bigger than we thought they would be and the did not fit in the configuration that we envisioned. Someone said to me, "Your husband is a carpenter. You'd think he could have brought a measuring tape when you went couch shopping!" Hahaha...

Anyway, we didn't, and couches in a 200 sq. ft. living room are MUCH bigger than they look in a 20,000 sq. ft. showroom! So, we had to get creative and re-arrange our family room. But in the end, we're pretty happy with the new arrangement and we LOVE the couches. They are definitely living up to the comfort expectation!

Oh yeah, and with respect to the 21 days - it took us exactly 21 days before we caved in and let Nikita join us on the brand, new couches. Ugh. I can't believe it. We said we would NOT let Nikita on the new couches. We're such SUCKERS for our dog!

winter, part deux

I know I haven't been really good with blogging lately. I'm tired, very pregnant and all those other excuses. I have a couple of draft posts that are sitting there waiting for me to complete - one is about how winter hit us in Vancouver this year. Most of the Vancouver bloggers I know did at least one post about the amount of snow we got in Vancouver at Christmastime. It was insane.

What is more insane, is the amount of snow we're getting in Vancouver in March! This is just too memorable for me NOT to post! I think this is the first snowfall in Vancouver that I have witnessed in March since I moved here in 1995. I know that my family in Toronto and parts back east are laughing at my incredulity over snow in March - but March in Vancouver is the time of year where the cherry blossoms start to appear, and on those first few sunny weekends, the motorcyclists start to insure their bikes for the year. It's definitely not the time of year where our weather forecasters predict 5 to 15 cm of snow!