The Lamp Chronicles

First things first, what the heck is going on with the freakin' weather today. Woke up at 5:30am, got ready for work, went out and waited for the bus for work....and waited....and waited....and waited. I live on 2 bus routes so between the two bus routes a bus comes every 5 minutes. I waited for over and hour and not one bus came. Finally some guy driving by tells the crowd of 30 of us waiting for the bus that there are 4 buses stuck and the bottom of the hill and it doesn't look like they will be getting out anytime soon. So I think after about 4 buses getting stuck they just decided to cancel our bus route. Isn't that lovely...So after I had waited an hour for the bus, Trevor was leaving to take Sterls to Ang's to get watched for the day and I hitched a ride with him to the train. Whew, an hour and a half late to work and I am tired and cranky from being the the cold snow drifts. I get to downtown and it is like I imagined the weather being horrible. There is a cm of snow here, what the freak? I was walking through hip deep snow drifts in Royal Oak....there is a 10 foot tall snow drift in my back yard....Right, I think I totally got screwed on this one and no one at work believes me that it is horrible on my side of the city. Did I imagine it? We will see...I will take some photos when I get home tonight and they will be posted to prove I am not a crazy person.

So Sterls new wheelchair finally came in yesterday. He got fitted and it took about 2 and 1/2 hours of pure pain on my part. He kept trying to escape and I was running around like a wild chicken to keep him in line. Plus in the waiting room he decided he should run over every one's toes while we were waiting to be seen. I love how good he is in the wheelchair, but it is like giving and one and a half year old a license. He thinks it is funny to ram people but I am going with not so much....My ankles always have huge bruises all over them from his ramming rampages. I must admit though, he is pretty freakin' cute in that chair. I cannot believe the mad chair skills he has for a kid of 20 months. Wow, I must say! I will have to take some new video footage to showcase the art of wheel chairing. On the bad end of this, every time I take in out in public in his chair I can't get anything done because I have people stopping me to tell me how cute and amazingly good he is in his chair every 5 minutes. He doesn't help out the situation because he is a little social monkey vying for every one's attention. He looks at every single person in the store and says "hi". Then he starts playing games with them and making them laugh. Shopping is a horrible experience that takes me 10 times longer than it should because of Mr. Social pants. I am a shy person that hates talking to anyone and pretty much everyone, so this is a curse to my life!

I think this is the longest I have gone without posting. It is not without reason, I have been horribly sick the last few weeks and haven't even touched my housework or any projects in turn for going to bed at 8pm and lounging on the couch all night veggin'. I am hoping that today will turn a new leaf and I will get back to posting and actually getting things done. Plus my promotion at work is taking every spare second of energy I have for training. So tired!

Here is the new awesomely cute hate that we got Sterls at H&M for $6. Can you believe it? Sooooooo cute (and he loves it and actually wears it everywhere)!

So I did a couple of projects recently and will share one today. I need to stretch out my posts since I have done nothing into a few different ones for this next week. My thoughtful and wonderful husband bought me a beautiful accent chair that I have been lusting after in my last post. Well, I love that chair, but now my couch pillows, rugs and lamp do not even remotely look good in my living room anymore. I originally had a bright white lamp with a black lampshade. I painted the base an off white and I recovered it to look like this:
Well, it has now been transformed to look like this:
That chair added such a fun palate to my living room that I decided i needed to punch up everything else in there. This is just the start of the living room make-over. What do you think? Old lamp or new lamp? I think it is kind of fun and playful...

What a sweetie...

Sometimes my husband still manages to surprise me!

I was having a pretty craptastic day yesterday. I woke up with a sore throat and just generally feeling nauseated and sick. I have to go to work as I got a promotion at work (no that isn't the crappy part) and it was my first day training. So I was just exhausted and my mind was full of so many weird things that mostly made no sense whatsoever. Some guy was supposed to buy our car and backed out last second (he literally called at 6pm when he was supposed to have been at our house to pick it up) after I had spent 45 minutes cleaning out the car, organizing the papers and just getting everything ready. So I had planned originally not to go to the SBHASA meeting that was at 6pm because they guy said this was the only time he could come. So now it was 6pm and I am late for a meeting that I really did need to go to in order to discuss our progress on the Hope Classic. Go to the meeting and I am just mentally exhausted by now as I have been going since 5am in the morning. So I barely understood half of what was going on before I had to leave so I wasn't late for an appointment that I had. I get out to my car where my husband is waiting to pick me up and what do I find? This beauty:

So I know I pretty pathetic but I just about fainted! My husband really knows that they way to my heart is a nice piece of furniture. I have been lusting after this accent chair for about 8 months now but not really feeling like I can justify the amount of money that this thing costs. So my husband buys her for me so I don't have to feel guilty spending that kind of money on a chair and to make my happy! Yeah, pretty much my day turned out great in the end! I love my chair!!! What a sweetie I have....

We used to go on vacation and drive somewhere about once a month and then Sterling came about and it really changed our traveling habits. We could no longer go camp in the freezing weather in the middle of nowhere with nothing but our own whims for entertainment. Now Trevor and Myself have to work full-time and take care of Sterling the rest of the time. Not to mention that Trevor pretty much has NO vacation time what-so-ever....Kinda Lame.

We decided to go visit Rye and Kay in Rossland with the mistaken assumption that interior B.C. is always warmer....Yeah, not ao much. We missed balmy 15 degree Celsius weather in Calgary for the freezing -5 degree Celsius weather in Rossland. Brrrrrrr! So we had to change our original plan of hiking and mountain biking the whole weekend to other things like visit the Ainsworth Hotsprings and cuddle up and watch movies. Of course, Sterling had a great time because he is dog obsessed and he chased Lilly (Rye and Kay's little Chihuahua) around for hours on end. It was an endless fight between those two as Sterling wanted to play with him and she wanted to run away in terror which just resulted in Sterling crawling around for hours with Lilly trying to escape. I can't blame her because he did pull her ear within the first 10 minutes of playing with him and it only ended with her yelping and him screaming on the top of his lungs. Sterls best time was when Lilly was cold so she got into bed with him and cuddled him all night. Every time he woke up that night he would sigh and say 'puppy' and go back to sleep. That really made him a happy little camper.

We got a sneak peak of Ryan's new film Life Cycles. I must say, be prepared to be amazed. There has never been a extreme sports film this amazing and this different. It even will appeal to the masses that do not like sports films as the cinematography is just amazing and mind blowing. Can't wait until August to watch all that blu-ray goodness (oh yeah, the filming is so high res it makes for even more cinematic goodness). Yup, going to be a gooder.

We stopped at Kimberley, BC overnight on the way home. Get this....We arrived at 2pm to realize that this massive spring festival has just ended at 2pm. There were people riding bikes and doing tricks down the snow, there was a water puddle to see which skier could make it the farther before the carnage began and even a huge jump for people to take weird objects like couch and canoes and whatnot off of....DANGIT. Seriously, we missed the even by mere hours. This is the only memento we have of our time in Kimberley:

We have this tradition we started a few years ago that we were going to take pictures of ourselves by all the large and world's largest in Canada. See Kimberley's largest cuckoo clock. Apparently for 25 cents you can make it cuckoo but it was so cold we were much too lazy to run back to the car a couple blocks down. Here are some of the other roadside attractions .I know we have a weird goal and will drive miles out of the way for a lame pic. but these are so ghetto they have charm. We have driven hours out of our way on a trip in order to get such pictures, we are kind of lame that way:

New Westminster, BC's Tin Man

Salmo, BC's Penny

Sparwood, BC's Mining Truck

Medi Hat, AB's TeePee

I painted our Master bedroom yesterday! It only took me 5 months to get it done, but I am super happy with the colour. It is a really really light barely there gray. I am hoping the details and accessories in the room will add all the charm. I decided I am not showing the side tables and master bedroom until I have put it back together.

I'm happy, You're happy

Went to Alberta Children's Hospital yesterday and picked up this sweet little contraption:
It is called a dynamic stander, but it is basically a wheelchair that you stand up in and Sterls loves it! We had a bit of a shaky start with it....We went to get it adjusted to him at the hospital and he just cried and cried for 20 minutes and wouldn't even touch the wheels to propel himself anywhere. We finally had to take the poor little guy out because he was hysterical and couldn't calm himself down. This completely surprised me as Sterls loves anything that can get him moving and into trouble! We took it home with us in hopes that he would like it better the more he tried it. Wouldn't you guess it...The second we get home he points and the stander and says '"please, please, chair, mama, please!" He was just a being a little rat throwing his typical fit if things don't get done his way. So he wheeled around the house for over an hour last night. His favourite thing to do was turn around in tight little circles for minutes at a time (I do have video and will post eventually) but it was pretty impressive. He finally has the right turning technique with one hand moving a wheel forward while the other hand moves the other wheel backwards. We are pretty stoked on this new addition! Especially with all the health benefits that comes along with this little beauty. Prolonged sitting has a lot of adverse affects medically on people in wheelchairs. First and foremost, the stander is going to help prevent the little guy from getting contractures (shortening of the muscles). When you sit with your knees bended for so long the muscles start shortening and no amount of therapy can reverse the effects for contractures. We would prefer not to add another surgery onto his ever growing list of surgeries (I know more are inevitable but less is better, eh?). We are constantly doing legs stretches and putting on his leg bands ( they keep his legs together so they are not splayed out into the splits all the time. He looks like a little merman in them) but it isn't enough, hence the stander to help stretch the muscles without limiting mobility. Prolonged sitting also has adverse affects on the body systems. The stander helps improve respiration, digestion, circulation, bowel and bladder function as well as bone development. Not to mention it has to be nice to be at the same eye level as other kids your age. We originally brought this home: And he liked it for about 1 week but then the terror started....We would put him it and he would howl and scream and shake around because he is a little shaker and mover and hated being strapped in (long car trips are a joy). He would get so angry that he would knock it over from swaying back and forth so much. Once put in the stander your basically in one position and he hated not being able to get where he wanted to go when he wanted to go. So the dynamic stander did not come a moment to soon and I must say it is relief to not have to torture your son on a daily basis. Well, most of the time...He screams the whole time I am doing his leg stretches.

I am borrowing the SBHASA's stander for now to make sure that the fit is good. I am thinking of purchasing a dynamic stander for Sterling as another child might need to use it before Sterling grows out of it. It is going to cost over $3500 for this little thing. Sometimes, the costs of medical supplies for disabled people makes me cringe. Luckily for me I have about the best medical plan in the whole freakin' world and my extended health care is going to pay the whole amount for me! Lucky little man, lucky me! These aren't considered necessary by the government unlike his little sitting wheelchair so they won't pay any portion of this :( How is this now necessary? It would definitely save them not having to pay for addition surgery and therapy. It is sure going to hurt if I don't have the same health care plan when I go to buy his next size up in a few years! So the little guy is happy and I am happy so all is good in my world right now!

Promises, Promises

I know I keep promising that I will show my new side tables but things keep coming up and this last week was so busy.

Monday- Meeting with SBHASA, I am on the board of directors.
Tuesday- We had a scheduled date night (we go out twice a month and watch other people's kids twice a month)
Wednesday- I had to go grocery shopping, I haven't been in over a month.....
Thursday- Babysit kids for date night exchange
Friday- Check out South Glenmore park (I am helping to plan the 2010 Hope Classic run for Spina Bifida)
Saturday- Clean the horribly messy house.
Sunday- Try to pretend I am not a neglectful mother day!


I have been so busy these last few months that I don't understand how people work full-time, be a mother and clean the house and still have time to look presentable. It seems that I am always cleaning the house when I get home from work, then I am making dinner, then I am cleaning up after dinner, then I am putting Sterling to bed. And if there is time I am trying to get in a work-out. I feel like Sterling is really losing out in this deal and it makes me feel like a really bad mother! I try to get projects done when Sterling is napping lately because I feel like it is unfair to steal time away from him to do something that I enjoy. (I know this sounds horrible, but I feel like I have about 10 minutes to myself each week and I want more!) I took a couple days off of projects this weekend and tried to focus on my house and son.

Saturday I pretty much spent the whole day cleaning up because I didn't have any time during the week to clean. We went on a small walk to get out and enjoy the beautiful day.

Sunday was Sterling day! We broke out his mega blocks set and pretty much spent the whole morning building. Wow, he is great with those things. He built massive towers taller than himself until he couldn't reach anymore. Then he would knock them all down with a huge growl and start all over again. So much fun! At night we went on a huge walk and found some playgrounds in our neighbourhood. I have to say that Royal Oak in Calgary is my favourite neighbourhood that we have lived in yet. He played on the slide and the bouncy horse (which he loved). He favourite was the monkey bars. I put him under the bars and he grabbed onto them and did about 10 pull-ups up to his chin! I can't even do one pull-up, so I must say this little guy is a muscley little thing.

Al our wheelchair vendor took Sterls' loaner wheelchair away on Thursday....Wow, I didn't know Sterling was so attached to it but I guess it is taking away your mobility and that must be a pretty crappy thing. He started wheeling the chair away and said bye and Sterling started freaking out "NOOOOOOOO, Chair! NOOOOOOOOO!!!!! CHAIR CHAIR CHAIIIIIIIIIIIR!". Full blown tantrum that lasted 45 minutes. I find it interesting that a 19 month old knew that he was taking it away for good, because everyone always pushes it around. Poor little guy, fortunately for us, Al just happens to be about the nicest person around. So, he told us that we could pick it up this week until his new chair comes in (which should be in the next couple of weeks).

I just feel a need to be appreciative about my life right now even though it is crazy hectic. It is a really nice feeling to know that the person helping you out with your equipment is just a genuinely nice person willing to help in any way. I must say when I was pregnant with Sterling I thought that this was one of the worst things that could happen to me, but it turned out that it was one of the best things that could happen. I have met some of the most nice people around and just so many people willing to help out or just listen that I would have not met otherwise. I am super shy and normally stay in my little bubble, but this has helped me open up a little more and get out and involved in more things. Sterling is really lucky to have such a great medical team to take care of him! Plus Sterling is such a little blessing! He is so determined to figure out how to make things work for himself even though it is twice as difficult for him than most children out there. Really makes you realize that you have it easier than a lot of people. If I could change the situation and have Sterling born without a disability, I would never do it. He is the person he is because having a disability strengthens him as an individual. I am a really lucky person to have someone like Sterling in my life! I am being sentimental today, must be the 2 whole hours of sleep I got last night.

-Alauna