Today I took Kira and Kai to get their eyes checked out. Kira has been going for these exams twice a year since she was 6 months old. I have terrible eyesight, so I have been careful to get the kids examined regularly.

Kira takes after me, she is far sighted and has a slight astigmatism. Today's check up went very well. Her prescription has remained the same for the last 18 months, which is a good thing as it means that she should have no problem getting laser-eye surgery when she is older (I am in that small percentage of the population that laser eye surgery is ineffective for, sigh). Her eyes have been doing so well that she now only has to go for annual examinations, hooray!

Kai has his first examination today. I was prepared for the news that he'd need glasses, just like his sister (Kira was 11 months when she got hers); but, it turns out that his vision is very good. The doctor feels that he will be near-sighted and likely won't need glasses. Even better, he doesn't need to come back for another year either! Hooray again!

All in all, I'm excited that, so far, my kids vision is pretty good. I am hopeful that when they are adults, they will be able to see properly when they wake up in the morning without having to put on their glasses, and won't have to fuss with contact lens etc.

I swear, this isn't a photoshop picture, they were actually playing together. 

Sitting up on his own and playing drums on the toy box

Sometimes the toy box is more fun than its contents

Well, it didn't take long for him to figure that trick out...Kai is crawling now. He quickly progressed from yelling at his toys to come closer to him to moving closer to his toys. He hasn't figured out how to move his legs yet, but he will happily army-crawl around the house now. He gets so excited when he finds me in other rooms, he beams from ear to ear and giggles with pride. So cute. I've moved past the "omigod he's crawling" terror to "ok, now he can find me wherever I go, so this is good". He will be 6 months on June 9, time is actually going by very quickly now, hard to believe that I will be back at work in 3 short months.

Kira has found a new love - spelling. Grandma Rose taught her how to read "cat", and from this she now reads mom, Kira, and Dad. She will spell out the word to your first and then say what it is, kind of like a spelling bee. She loves it. She is such a smart little girl, I hope that this continues as she gets older. She can count to 20 now too. I have no idea if this is typical of 3 year olds, but it doesn't matter to me - she is happy to keep learning and we are happy to keep teaching.

Kai is learning how to use the computer at a very young age

He is also a typical boy and loves to have the remote control

Things have been a bit hectic around here lately. Jon has been off traveling for work, he was in LA and London last week, plus my kidney stone was finally removed (yay!) and the kids and I went to visit my Dad on the Island. 

These events didn't seem to affect the kids at all, and both of them had a blast on the Island. Kai was showered in non-stop attention from Grandma and Grandpa, and Kira was treated to tons of time on the beach, riding her bike, and petting a donkey and horse. Here are a couple of pictures...

walking with Grandpa

Out for a bike ride

Throwing shells into the ocean

Here is another fun picture of the outfit Kira put together last week, she kills me with her independence. Note that the socks don't match, perhaps she's been spending too much time with her friend Aubrey?

The picture of Kai was taken by Kira, you can see her finger in the shot. She loves to take pictures all by herself. 

Kai has figured out how to move himself to get to his toys. He hasn't figured out how to crawl after me when I leave the room, but he is definitely getting close. Last week he'd struggle to move one or two strides (?) to get his toys, and now he is able to easily move more than 5. He will yell and whine for a bit, but then he'll move himself forward and grab the toy. He's also discovered that standing is awesome. He can hold himself up for a few seconds at a time, but loves when someone holds him up so he can stand and play with toys that Kira would play with. I'm afraid that he'll be walking before I go back to work! (He will be only 9.5 months when I go back to work.) It is exciting to see him grow and a relief to see that Kira hasn't grown tired of him yet and still loves to play with him and share her toys. I know that won't last forever, so we will enjoy it while we can!

My little girl is going to start pre-school this fall

I know she's only 3, but my little girl is growing up so fast. This week we took her to her pre-school orientation. The teachers like to have all of the new students come to a class for an hour or so before they begin their integration to pre-school in the fall.

We weren't too concerned about Kira making strange with any of the kids or teachers or getting clingy to me, but I wasn't expecting her to just ditch me as soon as we got there! Within seconds of meeting the teacher, she was off to class, hand in hand with the teacher, and into the gym to play with the other kids. Honestly, she was gone for over 30 minutes before she even bothered to look up to find me. Yep, she's going to like pre-school. The teachers seem fabulous as well, so I'm pretty excited to have her start there in the fall. There were a few moments when I was all choked up because she's getting older and starting school...I'm sure there are many more of these moments yet to come as the kids grow up.

Kira still loves to dress herself each morning, here is another one of her awesome outfits that she selected.

She is continuing her obsession with ice too, I have no idea why, but it is hilarious for us. She now likes to sleep with ice on her bare bum at night. She will usually remove her pants and then tuck the ice pack into her knickers and fall asleep with her pants off and bum in the air. Priceless. This is something that will definitely come back to haunt her on her wedding day.

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