Weekend Update

B went golfing early Saturday morning so Grace and I went to the parade (the fair is in town but we didn't end up going on any rides). B ended up catching the parade with us anyway, because they finished their round of golf and the road was closed, so he and his buddies walked up to meet us. Grace loved it. She loved all the big trucks, the bagpipers, and all the floats. One of the trucks had a bubble machine that was just pumping out the bubbles, which was a big hit for her.
We went to Zilla and Grampers' for the afternoon and Grace had a nap while Auntie Murr, Uncle Matt, my friend Sarah and I went swimming. Sarah is expecting her first baby in December and we are pretty happy about being pregnant together! We floated around the lake on our pool noodles and talked about pregnancy and babies; it was great.
On Sunday we had some family over to check out our new home. Aunt Theresa & Uncle Bob, and Aunt Lorraine and Uncle Art made the long drive out from the city to visit us! We had a lovely visit.
B starts his new shift at work tomorrow ... 6:00am - 2:30pm. He will be getting up mighty early! But, he'll be home nice and early too, and have more time to spend with Grace in the evenings. I'm sure it will take some time to adjust to, but I think in the long run it will be a good change. Let's hope he's not too exhausted in the morning!

Friday Night Leftovers

• I'm really looking forward to relaxing this weekend after the chaos of moving last weekend. 
• Grace had her 18 month check-up this week (only 1.5 months late). She was amazingly cooperative while our doctor weighed her, measured her, checked her eyes and ears. 
• She was not pleased about the needle. At least it was only one this time!
• The fair is in town! I think we're going to check out the parade, and maybe get Grace on the carousel. 
• We're looking forward to spending some time with Auntie Murr this weekend. I miss living just up the road from her. 
• Find more leftovers here. 

Home Sweet Home

The move is complete and we are gradually settling in to the new house! And we have internet again! 

I am so glad that we hired movers, and that we decided to pay my sister to clean our old house. Money well spent! 

I have to say a huge thank you to my Mom for all of her help over the past week. She and B spent a whole day painting while I was at work, then she had Grace overnight for two nights while our stuff was moved and we set up the new house. She unpacked and organized our kitchen which made the rest of the unpacking process a lot less stressful. Thanks to Dad too for taking a truck load of our stuff to the new house, and for helping B set up our bed, Grace's crib and other furniture. 

We're still waiting for our new couch and our table and chairs for the kitchen. Uncle Johnny gave us his old Lazy Boy and while it isn't in perfect shape, it sure is comfortable. It will be perfect for rocking and snuggling a new baby in a few months. 

I love how the colors in Grace's room turned out. We still have to put up her shelves, and we're ordering a big decal for one of her walls. The playroom is nice and bright and is coming together too. 

Grace is adjusting really well and loves our new yard. We set up her new water table and she has a great time splashing around. Just don't get too close unless you're prepared to get wet!

24 Weeks

Not much new to report this week. We've been so busy getting ready for the big move! Packing and organizing to move everything you own is even worse when pregnant. I'm tired, sore, and my ankles and feet keep swelling up like crazy. I find I have to sit down and put my feet up fairly often. Thankfully, B has picked up my slack. He has been awesome throughout this whole process, planning and organizing everything so we're ready for the big day (movers are coming on Saturday!) He also reminds me of important things because it seems this baby is stealing my memory and I forget everything.

Countdown

We get the keys to our new house in 3 days. 3 days!! I can't believe we'll be moving in to our very own house this weekend. It seemed like we were waiting forever from the time our offer was accepted, but now it's like it came so fast! We still have some packing to do but we're getting there.
I'm really excited to move, but I also have some mixed feelings about leaving this place. I really like it here in a lot of ways. We've lived here for years. When I first moved in with B it was into the basement apartment of this house, and we've been living in the top half of the house for almost 5 years. I really like this house, but we're outgrowing it, especially with Baby 2.0 on the way! This is the house we brought Grace home to, so it will always have a special place in our hearts because of that. I'm also really going to miss being so close to Great Aunts Theresa and MaryAnne, and Auntie Murr; but it will be great to be living close to Zilla and Grampers. And Uncle Johnny and Auntie Becky will be just down the road! They're moving into their new house this week as well.
I guess I'm just feeling emotional about the whole thing! I blame the pregnancy hormones.

19 Months

At 19 months, Grace:

• Loves being outside. As soon as we get her dressed in the morning she starts asking "outside? up the stairs?" We only have the one set of stairs in our house from the front door to the main part of the house, so she knows going down the stairs means going outside. She always says "up the stairs" whether she means down or up. 
• Loves music and loves to dance. 
• Is a bit of a picky eater lately, but I'm wondering if sometimes it's just because of the heat. She will still polish off an adult size plate of spaghetti, though. 
• Her hair is getting long! We are this close to being able to tuck her bangs behind her ears. 
• Has a current obsession with sticking out her tongue and making a pffft noise. It was cute at first but now we are really trying to discourage it. It's no fun when she does it with a mouthful of food. 
• Has a huge vocabulary. She will try repeating anything and remembers words very easily. 
• Is starting to recognize some letters, in a way. She doesn't always say what the letter is called, but she will point to the letter M and say Mommy, point to D and say Daddy, point to G and say Dacie (how she says Gracie) and a few others. 
• Does the little pat on the back when she gives you a hug. I'm not sure where she picked that up because neither B nor I do that, but it's cute. 
• Loves playing with her soccer ball and Jimmy, her little rocking horse (named by Great Aunt MaryAnne). 
• Is wearing 18 month size clothes, size 5 shoes, and size 5 diapers. 

23 Weeks

I'm 23 weeks along and feeling quite a bit of movement! I love feeling the baby move around and I can't wait until we can feel it from the outside so B can feel too. I'm feeling pretty good, other than some discomfort in my hips and a hard time sleeping. I toss and turn a lot at night. I'm also finding that sitting at my desk all day at work is bothering me, and I've been getting some sciatic pain. I've had a few days where my ankles and feet have been swollen and I'm sure that will only get worse as the summer goes on!
I'm loving my baby bump and I love when Grace points at my belly and says 'baby.' Lately this baby has been wanting me to eat everything bagels with herb & garlic cream cheese. But I have to eat them in moderation, I never realized how much sodium is in bagels! I also just finished a box of popsicles and need to get more! Lime popsicles are delicious.

Our Not So Fun Weekend

On Wednesday night, Grace had a fever. I thought it was from teething because all that afternoon she had been chewing on her fingers, but was still her happy self. On Thursday, she had a normal breakfast but didn't want to eat lunch. I tried making her a smoothie thinking that something cold to drink might be nice on her teeth. That came right back up. Gross. 

Advil brought the fever down, but it came back up when that wore off. She didn't want to eat but was still drinking water and a bit of juice, and she still had wet diapers so we assumed she had the flu. On Friday, her fever was even higher. We gave her some Tylenol but her fever was back up within 3 hours. At one point her fever was up to 39.8°C and I started to worry. We headed down to emerg at the IWK around 10:30 Friday night. After waiting for them to call us up to register for what seemed like forever, I asked what was up. They couldn't find our information from triage. Lovely. We had to be triaged again, then we were told it would be a very long wait because there were 2 traumas that had come in. Grace was sleeping on B's lap and her fever had gone down with more Tylenol, so we decided to go home. 

At 5:00am on Saturday, Grace woke up asking for a drink. We gave her a few sips of pedialyte, which came right back up. Her fever was high again too, so we headed back down to the hospital. This time we got in right away. The doctor thought Grace might have a urinary tract infection, so we spent the next few hours forcing her to drink a syringe full of pedialyte every 10 minutes so that they could get a pee sample. It was awful. The poor girl was exhausted and just wanted to sleep. "No, no, I seep! I seep!" 

Eventually, she peed, and it looked like there was an infection, but now they needed a sterile sample. We tried to get Grace to sit on a potty to pee, but she wasn't having that and just wanted to be held. I couldn't force her to sit there. 

She ended up getting a catheter put in to get a sterile sample. She was given a drug that made her pretty dopey and that would cause her not to remember the experience (the effects lasted about 20-30 minutes). It sounds king of scary but I had a similar medication when I broke my arm when I was around 13 and they had to reset it. It was tough watching them put the catheter in, but it was fairly quick and it was in and out. 

Finally they confirmed it was a UTI, and we were given some antibiotics and allowed to go home. Grace still had a bit of a fever and threw up yesterday morning, but I can see a huge difference in her today. She is currently having a nap but she was playing this morning and was pretty much back to her usual self. She had a small breakfast and was asking for hummus, so we know she's feeling better! 

Friday Night Leftovers

• Gracie is sick. It is heartbreaking to see her so miserable. 
• She's had a fever for two days. Tylenol or Advil brings it down, but it's back up when the meds wear off. 
• I was surprised at how much vomit can come out of such a little person. I think she's only thrown up once in her life before this. 
• We had a great day at the lake on Wednesday, our first time there this year. At first Grace didn't want to play in the water or the sand. I was surprised because she loves the sandbox. 
• She loved my holding her in the water; I was up to my waist and as long as she wasn't actually in the water she had a great time watching Murr, Jenn and the boys swimming. 
• She did get her feet wet and splashed around eventually, and played in the sand for a little while. 
• Uncle Robbie and Auntie Sharla are in town and came for a visit yesterday. Grace was sick and a little crabby but she warmed up after a few minutes. They're coming back tonight so I think she'll be more engaged with them. 
• Grace is still picking up new words every day. Some of her latest are 'ten-ture' (temperature, since we've been saying it so often the last couple days with checking for fever) and 'weeeech!' (reach) when she's struggling to reach something that she can't quite get. She is making small sentences too.   
• Grace has a set of foam letters for the bathtub, that stick to the walls and the tub. Whenever we play with them, I point out the letters to people's names that we know. G for Gracie, Z for Zilla, D for Daddy, etc. Two nights ago she walked into the bathroom for her bath, grabbed the letter J and said "Nonny!" (Uncle Johnny). Then she grabbed the D and said "Daddy!" She's a smart cookie! :)
• Find more leftovers here!

Wordless Wednesday (From the Phone)

Pregnancy Update

It's hard to believe I'm already past the halfway mark. It seems like just the other day I got a positive on that little stick. I'll be 22 weeks tomorrow.
This pregnancy has been very different from my pregnancy with Grace. B and I used to joke that I should be a surrogate because my first pregnancy was so easy! No nausea, no morning sickness, no medical issues, I felt great. I was tired during the first trimester and had the worst swollen ankles during the summer but that was it.
With this little bean, I had a few weeks of constant nausea. I never actually got sick, but the constant queasy feeling was horrible.
At 11 weeks, I had some bleeding. Not a lot, but enough to make me worry. Several friends who had had similar experiences were reassuring that a little bit of bleeding was okay, and I headed to my doctor to check things out. Our family doctor is out on maternity leave herself, so I saw her temporary replacement. I had just had my dating ultrasound earlier that week and all was normal, which she said was reassuring, and the fact that I wasn't feeling any cramping was also a good sign. She sent me for bloodwork that day (it was a Friday) and again on Monday, then I was back to see her on Tuesday. My hcg levels had dropped significantly. I was told to come back if I had any more bleeding and/or cramping. Although I felt fine, I saw the doctor every week for a while just to hear baby's heartbeat.
Thankfully, everything has been going well since then. I'm tired a lot, and my hips hurt, and I've been getting sciatic pain from sitting at my desk at work. But I am so excited for Grace to have a little brother or sister and I can't wait to meet this little bean!
We had our 20 week ultrasound last week and everything is normal; baby was measuring right on target for 20 weeks. And, we decided not to open the envelope! We're going to wait and enjoy the surprise of finding out whether we have a boy or girl when we meet this little one.We've been talking about names but are nowhere near agreeing on anything. Which doesn't really surprise me, we managed to work down to a short list before Grace was born and decided on her name when we met her. I imagine we will do the same for Baby Sampson 2.0.

Canada Day Parade

Great Aunt Mary-Anne's neighborhood has a Canada Day parade every year (this was the 13th!) We went last year for the first time and had a great time, so we went again this year. Grace was dressed in her Canada Day attire and was excited to take her bike in the parade. She waved at everyone watching from their homes in true princess style! It was really hot, but a lot of fun!

Happy Canada Day!

What a difference a year makes!