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.

Stripey Stripey

It is pathetic that it took me this long to do this particular post as I did this project back in April.  I decided to help paint and come up with an idea for my niece Jaedon for her birthday.  Her room was fairly plain to begin with so it was an open book.  We decided to go the way of the stripes as it seemed like she would be able to grow into this room more than a lot of other paint themes in children's rooms (I know more stripes, I am in love with the stripe so deal). So I got out my handy painters tape and started taping away....

And this is what we came up with:

The base coat was a simple cream colour and then we took a deep purple and a light grey to add some contrasting stripes into the mix. 

I originally had painted one wall but the cream was so mellow it needed another wall added to the mix.  My sister finished the next wall as I quite sick and preggo during this process but the room needed more.  This is the end result of the stripes we added for interest:

It is quite a lovely adult type stripe and I am in total love of these two walls. 

Now only to blog about the other 6 projects that I have completed and haven't taken the effort to load the photos onto the computer.  In my defense I have started my nesting phase really quite early with this pregnancy.  I have ripped apart my whole house from top to bottom in an effort to ultra organize before the baby comes.  The basement, main floor and Sterls room have been completed and my room is all that is left in the mix.  This has taken Trevor and myself about a month of weekends of a non stop cleaning fest. I now have about 10 projects I want to complete for the shared room I have in mind for Sterls and his little sister...Whew!

It's a.....

GIRL!!!! Yea for us!  So excited that we got our little boy and little girl in the first two kids.  So, the roundish looking thing on the right side is her little hip and the three dark lines to the left of it are her goods.  Here are some of the better photos of our little girl:

So there she is in all her baby glory.  Exactly on in her weight and size.  This is starting to feel a little more real and not just me imagining that I am pregnant.  How exciting!

Fun in the Sun?

We took our Canada Day weekend Party to Kelowna, BC and camped over the long weekend in Fintry Provincial Park.  It is about a 45 minute drive from Kelowna and 45 minute drive from Vernon on the opposite side of the lake on crappy secluded mountain roads.  It was supposed to be this brilliant plan.  Kelowna is usually around 35 degrees Celsius and sunny around this time of year.  We go there once a year and just have fun sitting on the beach and enjoying the warmth and our campground was even right on the beach and had a private beach.  Turns out that this year the weather didn't want to cooperate with us.  The week before we went 35 degrees, the week after we went 37 degrees, the week we went 18 degrees and raining on and off.  Yup, nice sunny vacation.  We did however decided that even though we were camping we could not let this spoil our trip and decided to entertain ourselves in other ways.  We did part of the Myra Canyon Trestle hike.  It is a round trip of 24km and is mostly flat in the middle of nowhere.  It consists of a section of the Kettle Valley Rail that has 18 train trestles and 2 tunnels in a 12 km stretch of railway.  This is the first train tunnel that we went through.  So freakin cool, but Sterls wasn't really impressed at first at how dark it was in there....

Notice how Sterls really puts into perspective how big this tunnel really is....

A section of the trail with 4 small trestles.  Most of the 18 train trestles burned down in the huge 2003 Kelowna fire, but they just rebuilt and reopened this trail a couple weeks ago.  Plus there was a wicked view of downtown Kelowna from this trail.

This was the highlight of my trip.  I made a new friend...

My new little friend enjoying the spoils of his trip to the goldfish that was on my foot.  They obviously know how to work the system with us humans that are suckers...

There was also a small hike to a waterfall that was in our campground.  It was pretty short but there was also 400 stairs to contend with.  This is a pretty horrible picture of the falls as it was a triple waterfall and really massive, but when you are pregnant and just walked 200 stairs to the midway point you don't really care to take better photos.

On our last day in Kelowna we woke up to more rain.  At about noon it cleared and got really sunny and warm for 3 hours.  We spent those three warm hours on the beach taking advantage of the sun and water.  Sterls had a blast on the beach throwing rock and filling his dump truck.

I do generally give my son baths but Sterls is sporting the I have no hair and I am super white so I have sunblock in my hair style.

All is all it was really nice to get away from the city for the weekend but next year better give us some better weather!