Kai loves to chew on Kira's Dora doll, fortunately, Kira doesn't seem to mind sharing.

Showing off his big, gummy grin 

Kira first thing in the morning 

 Deep thoughts...

The Stone

Boy oh boy, the last week or so has been a lot of fun and excitement. The good times all started last week, Friday, when I was driving to pick up Kira at Grandma Rose's house. A sharp and sudden pain hit me, it hurt like crazy. Thinking it was just "girl pain" returning post-pregnancy, I took a tylenol at Rose's house and headed home. While driving the kids home I had to make a couple of emergency stops at the side of the road because my pain had now turned into food poisoning, or so I thought. Jon met us at home and my long night began.

After 18 hours of pain that could not be remedied with medications (not that I could keep them down anyhow!) and didn't disappear despite a change in position, I finally sucked up my pride and headed into the hospital. By this point I could barely even speak anymore, it was far worse than either of my labours! Within 10 minutes of arriving at the hospital I had already been admitted, was in a bed and they were administering morphine (aka sweet relief!). I guess things were going to be worse than I thought. Anyhow, a CT scan confirmed that I had a lovely little kidney stone that was causing all this pain and discomfort. They loaded me up with prescriptions for pain, anti-inflammatory, and to break up the stone and sent me home. (On a side note, if you ever need to go to the ER in Vancouver between 8am and 8pm, go to Mount St. Joseph at Kingsway/12th, they are AMAZING and since it's a small hospital, they are super fast too, no waiting around.)

After meeting with the specialist on Tuesday, he determined that a surgical intervention would likely be necessary to remove the stone and scheduled me for Friday afternoon. Yippee. So, yesterday we went back to the hospital to get the stone removed, but, of course, I have one of those extremely rare stones that don't move despite all the drugs that I've been taking, and the doctor couldn't remove it surgically for risk of collapsing my kidney. Sigh. So, today is Saturday and now I'm back home on more drugs and this time an antibiotic has been added to the cocktail. I have a lovely tube in me that is supposed to help with the flow and, fingers crossed, the stone will break down this week and pass down the tube and out of me forever!! Regardless of what happens I will be back again this Friday for another surgery as the tube needs to be removed.

Despite all this, life does go on. The kids are doing so well. Kai is growing like a weed and charmed all of the nurses at the hospital with his big, gummy grin. Kira has been my little mommy, she was so sweet and concerned when I was "ill" at home. She'd bring me my puke bucket and tell me that this was where I needed to throw up, and she'd come hug me, kiss my tummy, and ask me if I was feeling ok. She'd even share her ice with me for my owee tummy. She is such a loving little girl and so protective of her family. I hope that she stays like that as she grows up.

I'd like to send a big thank you to everyone that has helped us out this last week, Jon especially for doing night duty and being so helpful around the house. And big thanks to Robynn and Zaven, Corrina + Chris, my amazing in-laws, and of course, Mom and Charlie. I cannot express how grateful I am to you and truly blessed to have you all in my life.

Kira and I took a trip to the Convention Centre Cruise Ship Terminal in an attempt to meet up with Grandma Tracy and Grandpa Charlie, who were returning home from a Mexican cruise. Unfortunately, we were about 2 hours too late to see them, but their boat was still there. Kira was very excited to go on the bus and train to see the big ships in the water. She had so much fun that she's asked to go again this weekend.

Kira is standing on the front seat of the bus "driving" Everytime someone boarded the bus she would shout "Look! More people coming on Kira's bus!" She'd even count how many people boarded.

Here she is "driving" the skytrain. She loved this part and even pretended to be steering. I had promised her french fries, so she told the train to take her to french fries. She was so excited when we came around the corner and McDonalds was right in front of her. She YELLED "Yay train! You did it! You found my french fries!!" Awesome.

Posing in front of Grandma and Grandpa's cruise ship. She was more excited to see it getting loaded up in preparation for it's next cruise later that evening.

A goose, just hanging out in the planter near the water. I think there may have been an egg in there as another goose was standing guard not too far away.

Momma goose checking out the surroundings

Kai had his shots about 10 days ago, at which time we switched him to more bottles and less breast feeding as he wasn't gaining weight fast enough (he'd gained only 1 pound in the last 2 months). It was a rough thing for me to accept, but obviously it was for his own good. I weighed him again yesterday to see if this new experiment was working out, and he now weighs 14lbs 9oz, an increase of just over 1 pound...in 10 days! Good to know that we made the right decision. He's now fully weaned himself and even resists drinking the pumped breast milk. Guess I can go back to drinking more than 2 beers now and eating spicy foods - hurray! :)

Kai in the baby bjorn gearing up for a walk to the grocery store. He loves being in his carrier.

Checking out Daddy's camera

The week in pictures...

Kira loves to paint, here she is posing with her latest masterpieces

We started Kai on rice cereal this week, naturally he wants to feed himself already. Here he is grabbing my hand while I attempt to feed him. Kira took this picture.

More ended up on his face than in his mouth...

...and in the end, this is what he wanted to eat the most

Kai rocking out in his exer-saucer, he loves it in there

Kira loves to dress her Daddy in his basketball shirt

Kira has learned that an "owee" can be made all better with ice. Here she is icing an owee on her bum. Priceless.

The Chicken Mask

Last Halloween Jon purchased a chicken mask; anyone that knows Jon well likely isn't surprised by this, and naturally Kira thought that it was a wonderful toy for her to play with. The mask is gigantic on her, so much so that she could wrap it around her head a few times. After catching her do this and noticing that the elastic was getting wrapped around her neck, I cut the elastic off.

Wrong move - she flipped out...I should have seen that coming.

This was around the time that she had started watching a lot of Dora, and whenever Dora needs to fix something she checks in her backpack. Kira said that we needed to fix her chicken mask and that we should check her backpack for some sticky tape. Eager to cut the tantrum short, I got her daycare backpack which is filled with clothing and maybe a snack or two, definitely no sticky tape in there.

After removing most of the items from her backpack, I was stunned to hear her shout out "sticky tape! Look Mama, sticky tape!" Confused, I went over to her and checked out this "sticky tape" she had found. It wasn't sticky tape at all but rather a pink fabric belt that had fallen off one her shirts and never made it out of her backpack. And wouldn't you know it, the damn thing fit on the mask and we had a solution. She was very, very excited and proud of herself for fixing the mask.

Here is a video of her just after we had fixed it, you can see the pink belt near the end of the video.

Kira had her first trip to the dentist this week. They counted all of her teeth (she has 20, so all of her teeth are in now) and even managed to polish 2 of her teeth before she rolled herself off of the seat - she was not a fan of the toothpaste. She did enjoy all of her stickers and toys that she got to take home after her appointment, especially her new toothbrush and toothpaste.

Her words are improving dramatically. She talks a lot, but for some words it is challenging to understand what she is saying. She has started working on pronouncing words correctly all of a sudden, it's wonderful. She has difficulty with S, F, V, and X; now she can do the "S" sound and her favourite word to say is "Yes", which she pronounces "Yesssssssssssssss". It's a nice change from "No".

She has turned into a 3 year old though, her time outs have been increasing and we can count on at least 1 temper tantrum per day. When she's not having a meltdown or whining about not getting her way, she is a very happy kid and continues to help us out with little household chores like laundry and grocery shopping. Grocery shopping is one of the only activities that Kira and I always do together and she loves it. I look forward to it too as it is a great bonding time for us, and it's nice to have some company along for the ride.

Kai's cold seems to have gone away. The runny nose and cough are lingering, but he has returned to being a happy and playful little boy. I feel bad because we got him healthy again just in time to give him is 4 month vaccinations, so now he's going to be feeling crappy again for the next couple of days. Poor kid can't buy a break.

At his appointment today, the doctor noted that his weight gain seems to have slowed quite drastically. He has dropped from the 75 - 90 percentile to the 25 - 50 percentile in just 2 months. After a lengthy discussion about his feeding, the doctor concluded that he seems to be self-weaning and advised that I stop nursing and we feed him exclusively from a bottle going forward. I am kind of bummed about this as this is the same thing that Kira did, however, Kira was only 4 weeks old, so at least we were able to get a few more months out of Kai. His health and growth are far more important than my pride...hopefully he'll start to put on some weight quickly.

With everyone being so sick the last few weeks, we haven't really taken any new pictures....I'll see what we can dig up and put some pictures in the next post.

Sicky Sick family

The last week or so the family has been struggling with a nasty cold. Kira brought it home from daycare, shared with Jon, which resulted in him taking 2 sick days this week. I can't remember the last time that he actually took a sick day, but it's been over a year for sure. Despite our best attempts to keep her from sharing the cold with Kai, she accidently sneezed on him, and sure enough, he got sick. He woke up Wednesday morning with a very congested sounding cough, but was otherwise fine. By the end of the day on Thursday he had a fever, was coughing up mucus (yummy) and was just miserable and clingy. After a lot of nagging by my mom, I reluctantly took Kai to Children's Hospital to be seen. My mom was worried because when I was a baby I had similar symptoms and it turned out to be pneumonia. Naturally, I figured she was worried for nothing and assumed that I'd be sent home from the hospital immediately...boy, was I ever wrong.

Apparently, if a baby under 6 months old has that kind of congestion in combination with a fever (Kai was 37.6 degrees), then they immediately undergo all sorts of wonderful tests and x-rays to rule out infections and other stuff. I was surprised that he would need tests, but was grateful that they were concerned and that he'd be taken care of right away. At the time, I had no idea what kind of tests he'd be getting done and it didn't even cross my mind that it'd be more than a simple x-ray or maybe a little needle for blood work; but when the nurse returned to our room he had his arms full with stuff. I guess my face must have shown the concern, so he said that I was welcome to leave the room during the tests (what he meant was that they didn't want me in there) as it is harder for the parents than the baby. Kai had to get a catheter, IV, blood work, and a nasal saline cleanse as well as his chest x-ray. Poor little guy! I gave him lots of kisses and cuddles, fought back the tears, handed him over to the nurses and then got the heck out of that room as fast as I could.

Unfortunately, as it was so late in the evening (11:45 by this point), 99% of the hospital was closed, and I hadn't brought a coat so I couldn't go outside...there was no where to hide where I couldn't hear my little baby boy screaming and crying his lungs out. So I stood in the waiting room blankly staring at the movie that was playing and pretending not to hear Kai. I knew that he was in good hands and that he'd forget about everything quickly, but it was hard. In hindsight, I am grateful to not have seen him getting all those needles (especially the catheter, I remember Kira getting this once and it was horrific to see her in such discomfort). When they were done, they brought my exhausted and quivering little man out to me; he looked up at me with eyes that said "I'm so tired, why is this happening to me?", then he fell asleep. He was a trooper during the x-ray, barely even cried - likely because he was all cried out from the tests that had just happened. He slept on me while we waited the 2 hours for the test results.

Just before 3am the doctor came in and said that all of Kai's tests were good, he had Bronchiolitis and would be congested for the next week or so and have a cough for about 3 weeks. We were told to keep an eye on his breathing and bring him back should his condition worsen. Kai woke up when the doctor came into the room and he greeted him with smiles and giggles, gotta love short-term memory.

Phew. What a relief to know that he was fine, poor kid was just beat after all those tests.

This morning his fever was still there, but it dropped after he had some tylenol (unlike his sister he doesn't mind taking medicine, I sure hope this doesn't change!). Tonight his fever seems to have come down and he's sleeping soundly. We are hoping that the worst is over and that he starts to get better soon. It's so hard when your kids are sick.