My boy's daddy

You loved him before you even met him. You eagerly awaited his kicks, felt with joy as he pushed his tiny toes into my side. You played with him before he had ever seen the light, breathed the air, felt the warmth of our bodies cuddling him. You loved to tell him secrets, talking to my belly as he learned to know your voice.

You loved him the moment he arrived. From hearing "It's a boy" to being the first of us two to hold him, you carefully cradled him as I got my first loving glance at the child that made me a mommy. You promised you wouldn't drop him as I got to briefly, awkwardly, hold him in my arms, laying flat on my back with a cut-open belly below.



You loved him as a baby, when his taking was everything with nothing to give, and yet he gave us everything, didn't he? He made husband and wife into family, he brought a joy into our lives that we never could've imagined, he was proof that God's Word is true, that He gives us good gifts and that we hold in our arms a precious, God-made child.

You love him now as a toddler full of emotion, of life, of love. Our crazy year-and-a-half year old, who would give anything just to be in our arms but then wants down to run and see the world, who loves his cars and rocks and building blocks and food and cuddles and so much more.



I love the way you love him. You make him laugh that special laugh, the one that comes right from his gut and up into the world. It's happiness in audible form. You chase him and he squeals, you wave to him and he pumps his arm up and down, thrilled to spot his daddy through the window or coming down the stairs. You read him stories, building a foundation for a lifelong love of the written word. You take care of him, changing diapers, giving baths, clipping nails, fixing owies, easing teething pain and nasty head bumps. You kiss and cuddle and hug. You love him fully, with more passion than I ever thought or expected.



And our boy loves you. I see it when you walk into the room, when he hears your footsteps, when you unexpectedly join us at breakfast. I know it from his sounds to draw your attention, his ungainly hugs to your back as he drinks his bottle, his smile when he finds you, his comfort at your presence when he's scared or hurt or just needs his daddy.



And I love the way you love our boy's momma. You take care of me, you love me fully and deeply and more with each passing day. I know this in my heart, that your husband love is for me and me alone. I know I don't share your heart or mind with any other, and this brings a comfort and security that surpasses any worldly belongings. You treat me so well, you encourage me, you lift me up with your words and actions. And you fill my heart to overflowing each time you make our first-born smile.



And now we will do this again. In short weeks, we will cradle a newborn. We will be tired, and overwhelmed, and covered in God's grace, and happy beyond measure. And our lives will change again, but all for the better. Knowing you are by my side, we will pursue this journey of parenthood together. You and I, always and forever.



I love you Justin. Happy Father's Day.

Things I want to remember about today

The powerful message this morning at church, about how God always keeps His promises, how He has made a covenant with us, how He has good plans for our lives and how He really does listen to our prayers.

The pure pleasure of sharing a simple meal with friends.

The way my boy shared (most) of his toys with our friend's two girls.

The sound of my son trying out his vocal cords with newish sounds. Not really distinguishable as anything, but they are definitely the start to speech.

The obsession my son has with 'Brown Bear, Brown Bear'. We read that at least two times each nap and bedtime now. It has even surpassed the all-hallowed 'Trucks' book.

The way my hubby made my boy laugh at the park when he sat on the rocking seahorse.

The baby moving inside of me. Small kicks, lots of flutters and such joy at each movement.

The overwhelming thankfulness I have at this life God has blessed me with: a loving, caring husband, a precious son and a new gift growing in my belly.

Best laid plans

What is that line about the best-laid plans? Whatever it is, the intent is plans don't often work. And today was definitely one of those best-laid plans gone awry!

Our friend and neighbour asked me to do a small favour for her, and I gladly complied. All she wanted was for me to hang out at her house for three hours today while I waited for a new mattress to show up. An easy thing to do and I immediately responded that it would be no problem.

Silly me.

After responding, I realized I had a midwife appointment that morning. So now, if that three hour window was going to be in the morning, my friend would have to scoot home while I was at the appointment and then dash back to work when I returned. Justin could've stayed at her place during that time but he really likes to be at the appointments with me and she said it would be no problem.

Still. That was one hitch in the works.

Thankfully for her, they called her this morning to say the three hour window would be between 2 and 5. New hitch: Justin got a job interview in the city scheduled for this afternoon. Which means now I was going to be entertaining Isaac for a couple of hours in someone else's (kid-free: read breakable things) home. And did I mention that's in his prime naptime?

But I figured, hey, I can handle this. I'll just load up Isaac's A-game toys and we'll play outside over there and possibly inside depending on weather, and I'll stuff him full of snacks, and pray that the mattress truck comes sooner rather than later.

Fast forward grand plans to 1:45 pm. My toddler is absolutely done for playtime. He is clearly tired and in need of rest. Uh-oh. I improvise. We quickly do a diaper change and bedtime routine and I put him down for a nap in his crib. It's 1:55 p.m.

I grab a book, a water bottle, a blanket, a warm jacket, and the baby monitor. The new plan is to sit out front of my place where I can see when the truck pulls up. I will calmly lock my front door, take the baby monitor with me and let the guys into her place. I know that will only take a few minutes. Phew, problem solved.

But then there's another hitch. As soon as I get outside, the baby monitor stops working. BIG uh oh.I throw my stuff inside and run upstairs in search of new batteries.

No. such. luck.

OK. New new plan: find an extension cord so I can still hear if he cries. So I find a power cord, hook everything up out front and bring my blanket to where I can see her place. I think it's about 2:03 p.m. at this time. I turn around to sit down and what do I see, but the mattress truck out front of her place and a guy in the driveway on his phone, most likely calling to find out why no one is answering the door!

Ack! Without thinking, I dash over as fast as I can (more of a lumber than a run), leaving my door slightly open because of the power cord. Apologize to the driver who says they just got there anyway. Let him in, they bring the mattress upstairs and in under five minutes I've locked up and am back in my own place. I bound upstairs to make sure I can still hear Isaac breathing in there; he's sound asleep.

Phew! Indeed, best-laid plans do often go awry. But in the end, it all worked out just fine. Isaac is currently having a great nap. My friend has her new mattress. And I got some good fodder for a blog post.

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign

We've been teaching Isaac sign language. And by we, I mean the DVDs I picked up from our trusty local library have been teaching him sign language.

This is actually the sign for 'eat' but that's just a coincidence, as I caught a pic. of Isaac "helping" me in the kitchen.


The cheerful songs are geared towards babies, and it makes it so easy to learn. I get the catchy (but quickly irritating) songs stuck in my head, but you know what? It works. I can sign a whole bunch of words now, which is cool.

Back to Isac though. He's doing pretty well with signing. I wish I had photos of this newish skill, but if I waited to get photos (and waited even more to get good photos) I would never blog about anything!

Anyway, before we got the DVDs, we'd talked about teaching Isaac a couple signs so he could communicate with us better. While at my mom's house one day dropping him off, I googled the sign for 'more'. After just a few demonstrations, Isaac had that sign down pat, and he's been doing it properly and with gusto ever since.

That followed with 'all done' and then more recently 'please'. He's so funny now when he wants something to eat that's yummy, he will very enthusiastically sign 'more' and 'please', (which he does with both hands across his chest instead of the proper one. It's so dang cute).

With the DVDs, he has learned 'eat', and does his own version of 'drink' that looks more like he's picking his nose. But they're distinct signs nonetheless. What he hasn't done yet is asked for something with the signs. He tends to just repeat the signs to us when we say something like, "Isaac, do you want a snack?" Then he'll use the sign for 'eat' back to us. That boy knows his mealtimes too; the words dinner, lunch, breakfast, snack, food and eat all trigger the 'eat' sign with him. What can I say, he's a kid after my own heart : )

It's so nice being able to communicate with Isaac more through sign language. While we know this isn't a replacement for speech, it's a good way for now to allow Isaac to let us know what he wants. Hopefully soon, he'll follow with some more words but for now I'm just happy he can tell me he'd like to 'eat' 'more' 'please'!

Notice how all the signs he's picked up are relevant to eating?

Mother's Day 2012

So I've arrived at my second Mother's Day as a mommy. Hard to believe a year has gone by since I had this little six month old bundle of joy.

Now the baby who made me a mommy is a rambunctious, curious, happy, mischievous 18 month old. Wow. I love him so much, it still makes me cry sometimes to think about.

We had a fairly good day to celebrate mommyhood. Justin was sick so I made Isaac and myself omelette for breakfast, then he played obsessively with his rocks (and a fly swatter that Mommy bravely used to swat at a bee or wasp or something yellow and flying) while I enjoyed my coffee on the deck.

We went to our church and actually arrived early! Here's my two favourite guys just chilling out front:

Then off to my parent's for lunch. Tried to take photos of me and my boy but he didn't want to be in my arms and protested loudly. That kind of sucked as he was fine until the point of me picking him up. And then he was fine with Justin picking him up. Little stinker. Luckily I took some pix throughout the day with him since I know what he's like in times when we really want a specific photo to happen. Or not.

Oh well, managed to get a few shots of him and me and my mom (not sure if they turned out, photos taken by Justin get lost in the infinite folders of his memory cards / computer files / office chaos).

Pix before heading off for church. I love my little family!

Anyway, the plan had been to have a nice afternoon nap then go to an event where Rick Hansen was coming through. It's been 25 years since he started his Man in Motion tour. Crazy, I totally remember when he came through Cranbrook. My parents took us up to E.K.C.C. to watch it and I remember we sat in the stands and there were tons of people and he went around the track in his wheelchair.

So back to Sunday: we stayed way too long at my parent's house just visiting so by the time we got home it was a super later nap than usual. So Isaac woke up as Hansen was already at the Heritage park giving a speech. Oh well. We had pizza for dinner and were going to just sit on the deck to enjoy it but I decided last-minute I wanted to watch a movie so Justin went to Safeway and got The Muppets. It was awesome! Isaac actually watched it while we ate dinner. Then after he went to bed we finished it ourselves.

Playing outside before dinner. Water fun then dirt fun: awesome!

Pizza!!


All in all, a great mother's day. I got to spend it with my son who made me a mom, and my mom who gave me life. Pretty cool.

Unfortunately by later evening Justin was feeling really awful, leading to a lot of days of trauma that we are still in the middle of. But that's a post for another day when the ending will be happier than the middle we're going through now.

A Perfect Day

Do you ever have a near-perfect day? I had one of those today. Mostly unplanned, lots of activity and an all-around memorable day.

It started with Isaac SLEEPING IN!! Seriously, if that's the only different thing that happened today, it still would've been an almost perfect, glorious day. I'm not sure why except that he had a really awful nap yesterday. But he has those lots and still doesn't sleep in the next day.

Anyway, we all woke up much more happy than our usual before-the-crack-of-dawn mood. Then there was fresh muffins for breakfast and Daddy joined us! That was also a very unusual, very much enjoyed change to our daily routine. Isaac looked at Justin lots and smiled and laughed and was just happy.

As per usual these last few sunny days, we hung outside on our deck for a bit this morning, so Isaac could get his daily quota of rock playing in. What is it with rocks and this kid? I love it. Getting to lounge in the sun while my son plays is a daily highlight for me.

Then we headed off to the Kakamega carwash fundraiser. On the way we stopped to show Isaac a fire engine that was out back of the hall getting washed and ran into Kevin and the firefighter who came to our house last year. That was cool.

The carwash was lots of fun. We got Krispy Kremes, I bought a lily plant for out front, we chatted with all the amazing HFL people working there and got our car washed. Yahoo! Isaac got soaked but we'd planned for that and just changed him before heading out again.

We tried to do garage saleing (hmm, apparently that's not a word!) as today was supposed to be the city wide sale. It was definitely a bust, with hardly any kid's stuff for sale and not many garage sales. But we did score a pair of size 7 shoes for Isaac for 25 cents. Since we were up in Promontory by the end anyway, we stopped in to visit Ginnie. Had a super nice visit and met some nice but crazy looking tatooed guys from a band called Kiros who were crashing at their place.

Headed back to CAC for hot dog lunch, where we got to visit with more HFL peoples, eat hot dogs, chips and pop and enjoy the sunshine.

Isaac and I had naps in the afternoon, then Justin took Isaac outside so I could have a longer nap. *Dreamy loveliness*

We all played outside awhile then retreated indoors where Justin and Isaac proceeded to play one of their fave games together: chase each other around with the little popper thingie through our living room / kitchen / hallway. It's a good game, with lots of squeals of delight.

We had SUPER YUMMY leftover butter chicken from last night. Had the Toyotas over for dinner Friday evening and Jenn had made this amazing veggie dish. Loved it, and tonight it was even better because no new cooking dishes to clean : )

After dinner we went for a walk and enjoyed the slightly-cooler temperature than it had been all day. Isaac went down to bed really well (he usually does now), and Justin and I got to enjoy some peace and quiet with a bowl of ice cream.

There is not much more than that to make it a perfect day. Beautiful sunshine, lots of good visits with friends, an incredible husband and amazing son to spend the whole day with. Awesome!

This time around...

This time around,
I'm already wracked with mommy guilt.

This time around,
food isn't settling as well, and lots of food is kind of gross.

This time around,
I haven't even taken a picture of my expanding girth.

This time around,
I'm not even very proud of my girth, since I already started with a 3 month belly look.

This time around,
I'm eager to know the gender but am not sure if I will.

This time around,
I noticed the less enthusiastic responses from people.

This time around,
That makes me wonder if people are only proud of you that you can get pregnant, not that you actually choose to do it again.

This time around,
I'm terrified of what my monster monkey will do to the new addition in the family.

This time around,
I've been feeling flutters for a couple weeks now (since April 21), just tiny ones but definitely there.

This time around,
I'm more nervous because

This time around,
I know what I'm actually getting into.

Two days after we found out I was pregnant, though I knew awhile in my heart before I could confirm it officially.