Oliver is here : )

Well, most of you already know that. I haven't written here in ages because I've been so busy. Oliver arrived safe and sound at 9:33am on March 21 2011 after 7 hours labor. It was another natural birth with back labor but this time it went much smoother thanks to the hypnobirthing course I practiced daily for two months before hand. Though it was just as painful, I was able to handle it better. It's an empowering feeling.

The last 2 months have been such a blur. It feels like he's been with us for years now and yet 9 weeks ago is just a drop in the bucket. He was 7 lb 4 oz at birth and is now 11 lb 1 oz at 9 weeks old. His personality is really starting to come out; he's smiling and really starting to coo. The last couple of days he has learned to get his fists in his mouth too. He sleeps and eats most of the day but his time awake looking around has been slowly increasing. Oliver hates soothers and so that leaves me to do the calming work. But I don't mind; after all they are only babies in life for a short time and I won't always get to cuddle him this way.

Emmett is semi interested, some days more than others. He likes to sit and hold him on the couch or show him his toys. He's very interested in how Oliver eats and sometimes mimics that with his stuffed animals. All and all I think he is warming up. Will be great to see them play together when Oliver is older. Life is busy but good. :)

Jan- Feb 2011

Now that Christmas is over it feels like we are well on our way to having the new baby join our family. We went to Nanaimo on Jan 8th to have a special 3D ultrasound to get a sneek peek of his little face and here he is...one picture labled so you can hopefully understand what you're seeing:

Click on these photos to see a bigger image of them

What you should be seeing is an image of his face, eyes closed looking towards the right of the screen so almost a profile. This picture of the baby was taken at 29 weeks (about 7 months)

Emmett surprises us sometimes with what he remembers. Almost as soon as we walked into the ultrasound, before I had even laid down on the table he said "Baby Brover!" He must have remembered from my 20 week scan and that one was just a regular ultrasound not a 3D one.

Since then he is intent on pulling my shirt up no matter where we are to give his baby brother a kiss. It's very sweet and he is quite fascinated with the growing belly. I don't think he really has any clue what it all really means but he will soon find out.

We are slowly getting ready now, we have just a few more things to get ready in the house and a few others to buy. The one thing i suddenly realized we didn't have was warm newborn and 0-3 month sleepers. Since Emmett was born in the middle of a hot summer he wore either just a diaper or a onsie for a long time, no sleepers. March will be a cooler months so I am on the hunt for warm sleepers and little pants and shirts. Other than that we have most of what we need in terms of clothes from Emmett. I just hope the seasons between them won't be too different to fit.

Taken Jan 30th at 32 weeks 4 days (8 months)

New things that Emmett is doing:

Loves to sing, wish I could get a video of it but he stops everytime I get out the video camera now because he wants to see it....this is a bit of a problem.

He is going through a major picky eating phase, hope it doesn't last much longer.

He can jump and loves to pretend he's a frog

He can sing his ABC's and count to 20 with the exception of number 19

He loves going to strong start, it's a sort of parent supervised play school with lots of little friends and activities.

Still has a huge love for trucks, firetrucks, police cars, dinosaurs, construction equipment, dogs, cats and robots of course. Also loves the Doctor Kit he got at Christmas that he uses to check the health of everyone and the boy baby doll he has. We got him a boy babydoll at Christmas so we could start practicing being gentle with the baby and so far he is....though it's not his favorite toy.

He still really loves to do puzzles and can do 24 piece wooden puzzles on his own since last fall so now we are working on the 48 peice puzzles.

He has new little phrases everyday. "That tickles" "you kidding me?" That's so funny" I joking....ah hahahaha" "Hey what you guys doing" and towards Maizie "Bad dog!" , "Maizie come here * kiss *kiss *kiss.

All in all he is a great little guy with lots of energy and I think he's going to make a fantastic big brother and I'm excited to see them interact with each other.

Things Emmett is doing that Mommy doesn't like one bit...the terrible twos...Lord help me! I am too big to move as fast as he can at this point and he knows it!

Tyler is busy with his GIS course that he just started and is working hard on that each evening for the next two years. I am happy to see him so happy in his new job. The change in his everyday prospective has changed immensely since joining the City of Courtenay nearly a year ago now. It looks like there will be lots of great opportunities for him there too.

I will take some more pics for Feb and load them on later, sorry these last two posts have been so long in coming.

Trip to the Fire Hall Jan 7 to bring the Christmas tree in for mulching. They cave Emmett that little plastic fire hat and after that he didn't ever want to take it off...not even to get in the bath.

Winter & Christmas

After the first big snowfall early Dec 2010

At the Christmas Tree Farm on the wagon ride.

The big Annual gingerbread decorating playdate we have together with our friends from the Mom's group. You can imagine what 12 toddlers are like after eating most of the sugary decorations! They had a lot of fun though. Wondering why he has his shirt off? Let just say he and the icing had messy run in within the first 2 min and I thought I'd better take it off while I was still ahead becuase we forgot to pack an extra along.

Nothing sweeter to look on than a sleeping little one

At the "Big Trucks in lights parade" in Cumberland BC. He loved the dump trucks and cement trucks all decked out in Christmas lights.

Mount Washington Ski resort, about a 15 min drive from home had the biggest single snowfall in the world in a 36 hour period. We went up to check it out. Wish we could have gotten pictures of the ski condos there which were buried to the second floor in snow. Dec 26 2010

Just at the base of the mountain. Dec 26 2010