Where do I even Start...

You would think that staying home would give one person more time in which to get things accomplished.  Not so much...So I thought I would do a blog with some photos in which to show what has been going on the last couple weeks.  Well three weeks.  This is the belly at 25 weeks pregnant.  And yes, I am three weeks late as per usual as I am  now 28 weeks preggers.

I now have chosen to do a lot of sitting as I have entered the 'everything in my body is extremely uncomfortable phase'.  We played scrabble the other night, which led me to the realization that I have an absolutely nerdy family, and I love it!  Scrabble turned into this....

Which turned into this....

Which led to Sterling feeling left out and turned into this....

Took some photos of Sterls for the first time in a few months.  I love taking photos, even quick snapshots so I don't know why I don't do it more!  

Sterling loves to watch hockey, absolutly loves hockey in any form (a little boy after my own heart).  So when he found this hat in the winter hat bin he went ape and he has decided that he need to wear his 'hockey hat' as he calls it all the time (in the house and out of the house).  Here are the latest 25 month old photos of the Sterls.

I have started organizing the clothes and baby toys for our little girl this last week.  I will have more photos of this massive project when it is completed.  I started by making these size tags for the shared closet.  I hated having all my clothes sizes messed up with Sterling so I went uber organizer with this one.  I just used a cup and cut a circle into some spare cardboard.  I think covered them is cute craft paper and voila! Instant size hangers, yea!

World of Difference...

A lot has happened over the last few weeks....Whew!  Which has led to me not doing any posts and my life changing dramatically.  First, I had several appointments with my pre-natal doctor and she determined that for the health of our baby that I cannot work anymore.  Wow, one day I am at work thinking that I will be there for another 4 months and then the next day I am done work for the next 16 months.  I can't lie and pretend that I wasn't a little happy to have 4 months off before our baby is born but the circumstances are not ideal.  Plus, I am supposed to take it easy and for anyone that knows me that is next to impossible.  I can't sit for more than 10 minutes at a time...I pretty much have gone stir crazy and am losing it pretty quickly.

The 2010 first annual Hope Classic Run/Walk/Wheel for Spina Bifida and Hydrocephalus was last Saturday (August 28, 2010).  Thank goodness!  I think about 10 million pounds of stress and nerves have been lifted off my back.  I probably put in about 500 hours of volunteer time into this event so you can bet I am happy to be done it.  All in all I think things went pretty smoothly and we can't complain about how the event went.  We got several participants telling us that it was the best run that they have ever done.  So I think that is a pretty good compliment considering a ton of things didn't go quite to plan!  The glacéau water guy didn't show up until about an hour after everyone had completed the run.  So unfortunately runners were thirsty after 5k and 8k of running.  We did have about 125 runners, which is a freakin' amazing feat!  The huge events they have here are about 500 people so you can bet we were pretty impressed but under-prepared for this amount of runners.  Edmonton told us the first year they had about 40 runners so we really under guessed our numbers and ran out of shirts....oops!  But luckily the caterer for the BBQ had lots of extra food and it was really good food too!  Here are a couple pictures.  All in all weather was nice, BBQ was amazing and door prizes were sweet.  My brother and his family acutally won some of the best prizes....2 Westjet tickets anywhere, 2 Nakiska lift tickets and 50 Home Depot gift card, lucky!  Dangit, Trevor and I were hoping him and Sterls would win those tickets!

Some of our disabled participants and volunteers along with the disability dogs.  

Gotta tell you, some of these kids are pretty inspiring...One kid (about 10-12 years-old) did the whole 5k on crutches!

2!

On Saturday August 7, 2010 my little boy turned 2!  How this happened I do not know, but it did sneak up on me.  We had a little shin dig for the little guy.  Some of Sterls boy cousins came to join in the fun.  We opened presents...

This is the 'big' present I made Sterling.  Well, this is what the 'big' present looked like after I cut all the pieces for it but before I put it together.

The reaction to the 'big' present.

This is the present I made Sterling.  He loves watching Trevor and myself work with tools all the time so I decided it was time to make him a place to play with his own set of tools.  $20 in lumber and 2 hours and this is what I came up with....All the tool benches in the store did not accommodate for his wheelchair and he would not be able to get close enough to play with anything.  So I custom designed this tool bench for the little guy.  It also seconds as a drawing table!  Bonus!

Apparently it was the hit of the party.  After I unveiled his present it was all the little boys would play with for the rest of the party.

Had to have the train cake.  Sterls loves Thomas and all sorts of trains.

He actually blew out both candles with minimal spit all over the cake, whew!

All is all it turned out to be a pretty fun party.  Minus, he ate too many treats and got a tummy ache later that evening.  It has to happen to us all sometime, doesn't it?

Only 18 more weeks to go!

Yea, over the halfway mark.  Always good news to hear!  I know these photos are over 3 weeks late but here they are anyway:  The first in the pink shirt is my 18 weeks with our baby girl and the second in the swimsuit top is 18 weeks Sterling.  Looks like I am finally starting to even out in size, I was worried with my 12 week photo (I didn't even take any with Sterling at 12 weeks because there was no bump to take a photo of) that I was going to be massively over sized and clumsy.

On good news...I finally finished my toy shelf/bins for the living room area!  Well, mostly finished.  I am undecided about the finish that I have put on it and need opinions....I will post this week to see what everyone thinks would look better.

Little Sterls

Sterls went in for a series of three appointments this last month to ACH in order to get his new Ankle Foot Orthodics.  The first appointment they took his little legs and made a cast of both his legs in a 90 degree position out of the same stuff you get when you break a bone.  After they hardened they cut them off and kept them in order to make Sterls new AFO's.  Apparently, they take the casts and fill it will some stuff to make a mold replica of Sterls legs.  Then they take these molds and form the new AFO's around them.  Pretty sweet stuff....It only took 20 minutes total and Sterls was able to pick out the material he wanted them to make them out of all by himself.  He was insistent that he had to have the blue planes and trucks not the white ones. 

The second appointment consisted of him going to ACH to get fit into his newly crafted AFO's.  They were a little long so they cut them down to size to fit his midget feet.  We were then able to take them home and give them a test drive.

The third appointment was to make sure that the little guy wasn't getting pressure sores from any high spots in the AFO's.  Since he can't feel his legs these are particularly worrisome as they can develop fast and they are open wounds.  He doesn't have much circulation in his legs so they tend to heal really slow as compared with the rest of his body from injury.

So here are little contraptions that he now has to wear for 12 hours a day for the rest of his life.  This helps as he does not have any movement in his feet and he does not use and stretch the muscles on a constant basis to prevent his muscles from tightening resulting in him not being able to stand or bend his feet to 90 degrees anymore.  After the muscles have tightened it is too late and can only be fixed by a surgery that releases the muscle tension on his legs.  Since he already has a plethora of coming surgeries you don't want to submit him to more...Poor little guy, they really make finding shoes hell.  I only say this because Trevor and I admittedly have a little bit of a skate shoe fetish and we had all these really adorable skate and converse chucks (I will not go into the pathetic amount of shoes that we have for a baby/toddler) picked out way before he was born that don't even remotely fit and never will.  He went from a size 2-3 to a size 6 (even these tend to be tight and hard to find) overnight.  At least I have my little girl to come and fill the shoe gap and get some wear.

These are Sterls first set of AFO's or his boots as he like to call them.  His new ones are pretty high tech compared with these, but still equally cute!

Here are some recent photos of the little guy.  Had to share some of my favs. as he has quite a little personality now or should I say defiant streak.  This is Sterls in 'timeout'.  Amazingly enough, I put him in the corner for timeout and he stays there quietly thinking about what he has done just staring at his feet until I come get him.  A good plan of action if I must say so myself.  He is so quiet and serene looking I can't help but get him out of it really fast as opposed to if he was throwing a fit....

Yes, I did have a boy.  I am reassured by this fact when he tells me "Mama, potty!" and we get his little pot and he always has to make sure to have reading material while he does his thing.  Yup, my little man.  I am hoping that this is a good sign that he wants to go to the potty and that he will be able to potty train.  Only 5-10% of children with Spina Bifida are able to potty train.  This is due to the nerves in the sacral part of the spine being damaged which also leads to damaged in the kidney's and bladder.  Sterls defect was located in L3 (the third lumbar vertebrae up from the bottom).  This means that all the nerves located below this lumbar can or do have nerve damage.

  So far, the tests have been pretty positive.  As of now there is no kidney damage and no bladder damage and he can pee in a stream (which is supposed to be a good sign).  As well of the fact that he does not need to be catheterized which the majority of people with Spina Bifida do is a little reassuring.  We have been getting regular check-ups every 6 months for his kidneys and bladder to maintain good bladder health.  So fingers crossed... 

Ug, this picture just makes me tired looking at it.  How someone has so much energy and happiness at 6am in the morning is beyond my imagination.  I think it takes me body about 2.5 hours from when I wake-up to have the ability to be silly and happy.  It takes Sterls about .5 seconds for that to happen in the mornings. 

Sterls new set of 'kicks' that we got for him to fit over his AFO's this last weekend in Edmonton.  Pretty freakin' cute if you ask me and on clearance at West 49 as a bonus!  We also got our little baby girl a few adorable outfits.  I am weary to share our name for her as she will come out and end up not being a she but in fact a he.   I guess we will decide as time goes on.

So that is new and how the little guy is.  He definitely is a handful right now but he is always making me laugh.  I can't help but be happy when I am around Sterls and his happiness and silliness is contagious.  How one little person can  have so much joy inside of them is beyond me.