It's a girl!

Baby #3 is here and she's a girl! Sarah Lorraine was born on Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 10:40am. She weighed 6lbs 15oz and was 20 inches long. She's a little cutie! Big brothers Daniel and Adam absolutely adore her and won't stop hugging, kissing and cuddling her. She's definitely got two very protective older brothers. Anyway, here's a little bit about Sarah's birth day.

Labour started around 2:30am on the 24th and we arrived at the hospital at about 4:30. We didn't want to waste any time getting there, since Adam arrived so quickly. I did not want to be having my baby in the car!

Luckily, things didn't go quite as quickly as with Adam but she still came pretty fast. After 8 hours of labour, little Sarah entered the world. Here's the proud Mommy and Daddy.

She was so alert, right from the beginning. And she has beautiful little eyes. Wonder if they'll be blue like her brothers?

There she is, skinny little 6lbs 15oz. She's got long skinny fingers and toes, wrists and ankles, just like her mom. Her hospital bracelets wouldn't even stay on!

Aunty Laura was there to witness her birth.

So was Gramma. Sarah is named after both her grandmothers as well as some great-grandmothers. Sarah is Gramma Terry's given name, as well as her grandmother's first name. Lorraine is Grandma Rowe's and Great-Grandma Campbell's middle names.





Sweet little baby.

Daniel and Adam came to meet their sister in the afternoon. They were so proud! Daniel just had this look of awe and pride on his face the whole time. Adam kept smiling at her and saying, "Baby-ya!"

Our family is complete!

These may be two of the cutest pictures you've ever seen. :)

Time to go home! We were just in the hospital for a little over twenty-four hours. I was ready to go home. James spent the night at home with the boys so Sarah and Mommy were on their own for the night. It was a long night, since Sarah didn't fall asleep until 4am. (That means I had been awake for 25 hours, 8 of those spent in labour. I was exhausted!) Plus, the food was terrible, even for hospital food. So it was nice to go home and start our lives as a family of five.

A little update

I haven't been too good at keeping up with the blog these days. Things have been a little crazy around our house. Last week, both the boys came down with the coxsackie virus (hand, foot and mouth disease). Poor little guys! Adam had some pretty bad blisters on his hands and feet but his mouth was OK. Daniel got it much worse in his mouth, though. He had so many painful blisters in his mouth that he didn't eat, drink or talk for two whole days! You've never seen anything so sad! Our house was eerily quiet, too. Finally, on day three, Daniel was able to say a bit (with a funny lisp) and eat a bit. Now they're back to their normal, fun selves, thank goodness! As much as I appreciated the quiet, it's so much better to have my happy, smiling boys back.



We're still waiting for baby #3 to make his/her appearance. I was a little afraid the big day might happen last week, while the boys were sick and my parents were out of town. But, luckily, baby has decided to stay put for a while longer. I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow, so we'll see how things go then.



We're back into our fall routine, now that summer holidays is over. I've started taking the boys back to StrongStart, our drop-in, parent participation preschool program. They love it. Daniel's right into it now, participating in all the stories and songs that the teachers do. Adam is starting to learn as well and it's so cute to see him try to do actions to songs and things. The weather is still beautiful most days, though, so we're still spending a lot of time outside at the park having picnics, too.



I just have to take a moment to brag about my boys a bit. Adam is starting to talk a bit more, although he tends to stick to his few favourite words. Most conversations consist of:

• Mommy
• Daddy
• Deh Deh (Daniel)
• me (which is me and please)
• nana (thank you)
• woo woo (train)
• wee-oo wee-oo (fire truck)
• wee (playground, slide)
• oh-guy (OK)
• googie (cookie, cracker, any yummy food)
• apo (apple juice)
• nummin (lemon - as in lemonade, lemon muffin, now means any kind of muffin)
• animal sounds - moo (cow/horse), wah (duck), baa (sheep, goat), panting with tongue out (dog)

He's started to make two-word sentences, but usually one of the words is no! Most of often than not, it's "No Deh Deh!" when Daniel does something he doesn't like. :) One of my favourites is when he runs up to you with a big smile on his face and says, "Hah-low googie!" I don't know if that's his pet name for us or if he's just always got cookies on the brain! He's also kind of saying his own name - not on his own but he will repeat it. The funny thing is that he calls himself Amam! It was a sad day when Daniel outgrew Amam and started calling him Adam. But the cute name continues with Adam himself!

When he wasn't feeling well, Daniel was more willing to do crafts and school work with me. I got to be teacher for a little bit! Boy did he surprise me! We learned a little bit about apples (to prepare him for the apple squish at Thanksgiving) and here's the cute little apple he coloured. He even drew the face himself.

And then I asked him to print his name for me. I was shocked! We've never tried this before. I told him the letters but he printed them all himself!


And, just because it's cute and doesn't happen too often, a picture of both boys looking at the camera (kind of...).

For Grandma Rowe...

At the beginning of the summer, I signed the boys up to take part in the Summer Reading Club offered by most public libraries in BC. They had to read every day for 7 weeks. Daniel and Adam definitely love to read and to be read to so we had no problem completing their reading sheets. Today was the day they received their medals for completing the program. It was a beautiful day and the ceremony was held out in the park outside the Metrotown library so there were about 150,000 people there! But the boys got their medals, which they thought were pretty cool and couldn't keep their eyes off of, as you can see since I didn't get great pictures of them!

Swimming lessons

The boys went to their first swimming lessons this morning! Well, it was Adam's first time at swimming lessons and Daniel's first time doing swimming lessons without Mommy or Daddy. (He did the parent and tot ones when he was 6 months and 14 months old.) They were both very excited about their upcoming lessons.

Daniel loved every minute of his lesson. He volunteered to be the first to try everything and wasn't nervous at all about trying new things or putting his head under the water.

Adam, on the other hand, hated every minute. :( He cried pretty much the entire time. He's never been a big fan of the water anyway and this water was quite cold. Plus, there was no nice easy introduction to the water for these little guys, even though it was the first time in the water for many of them. The first thing they were told to do was dunk their heads under the water! Adam was obviously not impressed. Many of the other kids cried during the lesson but I think Adam cried the most.

Meanwhile, Daniel was having a great time in the water! He was swimming like a shark, floating on his back, kicking his feet and swimming on his front with a noodle.

The only time Adam stopped crying was when James had him mostly out of the water. As soon as his bathing suit touched the water, the crying started again.

Adam did calm down a bit when the lesson was moved to the warm baby pool. Unfortunately, they only get to go in the warm pool for the last 10 minutes of the 30 minute class. I'm sure Adam would be less upset if he got to stay in the warm pool the whole time. Hopefully next week goes a little smoother. We're not expecting a water lover yet but it would be nice if it didn't feel like we were torturing him during the entire lesson!

Baby #3 update

Not much has been mentioned about baby #3 but that doesn't mean that we haven't been thinking of him/her. In less than a month, our newest little one will be joining our family! It's hard to believe our wild, crazy and fun household will soon be wilder, crazier and more fun!

All is going well with baby - moving a lot, growing right on schedule. At my last appointment, the doctor said everything was picture perfect and I could skip my appointment next week and come back the week after. After 36 weeks, women are supposed to come weekly but the doctor didn't see any reason to waste my time coming in when everything is going so well. That made me happy after having waited for an hour to get into my appointment! There are a lot of other things I could be doing with my day while the boys are in daycare!

Here's a new picture to show just how much baby #3 is growing.

The countdown is on!

Savouring Summer

Summer doesn't want to end yet! After a few grey and rainy days, our sunny weather is back. The boys and I took advantage of it today and spent most of the day outside. Soon we won't be able to, so we better do it while we can!

This morning, we went to Central Park to see all the ducks, geese and squirrels. I don't think the boys had ever been to this particular side of Central Park and they had a lot of fun.

They played in the forest:


They played on the playground:

They found treasures:

They fed the ducks:

They got swarmed by the ducks:

We had a picnic lunch at the park and walked around the pond a bit before heading home for a nap. But the summertime fun wasn't over then.

When they woke up, they had homemade apple juice popsicles:

They went out on the back deck and did some fingerpainting:

They then managed to get fingerpaint all over the bathroom while washing their hands, so Mommy got out the bathroom cleaner and cloths and made them clean the bathroom! That wasn't really a summertime activity but they actually enjoyed it and I got a clean bathroom out of it!

After dinner, we all walked up to the mailbox and saw about eight other neighbourhood riding bikes and playing in the back lane. One of the neighbours had brought out a huge tub of strawberry ice cream for the kids, so they all had ice cream together and ran wild in the lane until 8:00. Daniel and Adam were the youngest of the kids out there and weren't too impressed at having to be the first to head home to go to bed. But they certainly had fun. There won't be too many more evenings like this before fall hits us.

Painting with Daddy

Here are some pictures of the boys (all three of them) painting the bunkbed the other day. Well, James painted the bunkbed. Daniel and Adam "thought" they were painting the bunkbed. :)

Bunkbeds!

It's official! The boys are finally sharing a room and sleeping in their bunkbeds! They've been so excited about sharing a room but it took a while for us to get the bed painted and put together. It was almost ready to go last night but we stayed out late visiting Great-Grandma Rowe and the other relatives at Auntie Lou and Uncle Alex's house. So tonight was the night.

We bought mattresses from Ikea and they came vacuum-sealed and rolled up. When James cut open the plastic, the mattresses basically inflated right in front of our eyes. The boys were so excited, especially Adam. He started jumping up and down, yelling "YAY!" It was so cute! I had a tough time getting the sheets on the beds, especially Daniel's top bunk. I told James that I wasn't changing those sheets until after the baby is born. That was hard work with a big belly! :)

Finally, the boys were all in their jammies and under the covers. Adam loved his new animal comforter and puppy dog sheets.

James sat with them as they fell asleep tonight, to make sure everyone stayed in bed and there wasn't too much talking. It took a little while, but went quite well. Adam tried to crawl out of bed a few times and Daniel kept saying he needed company in the top bunk. But, overall, it was a success. Let's hope tomorrow night is even better.