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August 5, 2003
August 5, 2003
Good morning. After a long absence, I finally kicked myself in the butt and decided I needed to really give everyone an update and to try and remember some of the many things that happened over the last couple of months for Erika’s sake so she can have a memory of her wonderful toddlerhood.
It’s great to see so many new people on the Mom’s Today Board. I wish I had the time to meet everyone and catch up with everyone.
I’ve got some pictures posted at Babies Online. I’ll add the link to the bottom. These pictures were taken on our recent vacation. I’ll start with that. First of all, let me say that my thoughts are with all the people who are affected by the terrible forest fires in British Columbia. It is so strange to think that we travelled many of the roads on our vacation that are now closed due to the fires and that we spent time in places that are severely affected by the fires. We attended a wedding at a ski resort (Sun Peaks – just outside of Kamloops) and the whole resort is now evacuated – only my poor dress that I forgot at the hotel is still up there…… But, back to our vacation. We had a really fun time. We visited my girlfriend and Erika got to meet her little boy again who is a year older. They had some fun together but Graham at almost three wasn’t quite that interested in a little 2-year old girl. We then went on to Sun Peaks where DH’s cousin was to be married. Up there, we met up with DH’s sister and her family as well as my inlaws. DH’s sister and family live in California and so the last time we saw them was over a year ago and the babies were only 7 months old at the time. Erika and her cousin Sophia are only 16 days apart and Madeline is 6 ½. The girls had a great time together. It was fun to see them play. The wedding was great fun and Erika outlasted us on the dance floor by a long shot. She didn’t want anything to do with us because we think she feared that we would take her home. You know what is really fun though…… I love to dance (with a passion) and if I had the chance I would be up on the dance floor all night. DH is not a dancer at all and he will give me a couple of dances because he knows how much I want to be out there. Mind you, I don’t find dancing with him all that fun anyways because (sorry to sound picky) he is just not good at it at all. So now, that I have a little girl who loves to be out there on the dance floor, I can go out there and hop around and go nuts with her without anyone thinking I’m strange about carrying on on my own. I had a blast. I danced with all the little kids and my BIL and I ended up having a blast because my SIL didn’t want to dance that night either.
The rest of the 2 weeks off were spent at home doing things with DH’s family. We took the kids to the zoo and to the pool and just generally enjoyed the nice summer weather.
One day, I got to take a quilting course while we were off. I learned to make kitty cat blocks. I had a blast of a day but I still have 4 more blocks to make before I’m close to finishing the quilt. The store where I usually go to for my courses has their fall schedule out now and I’m drooling. There are 3 courses I would really like to take during the fall but that’s probably more than we can afford (including my own time). I do take that time as my personal break from Erika. I find those few hours or a whole day away without the distractions of daily life really help me re-energize.
Erika picked up tons of words while we were off work. She loves the pool these days so I think we’re at the point where we have to start spelling the word POOL so that she doesn’t get it as soon as we talk about it.
Our little girl makes us laugh………. It’s one of the best kinds of laughter. She is so funny, spirited and personable that it warms your heart and when she laughs and giggles and blows kisses everyone just falls in love with her (spoken by a true Mom…..). Mind you, we do believe that one day we will get a letter from her teacher saying “We need to have a talk about Erika. She seems to be turning into the class clown”. Erika thrives on entertaining everyone – be it at the dinner table or at the grocery store.
We had a big bruise last week. Erika has developed a fond interest for the funky kids shopping carts that have a big contraption looking like a car or train or whatever it may be. I always shuddered at the thought of having to push a big cart like that around the store but Erika insisted. Now, when she sees the funky carts, I can’t convince her to go into a regular cart. Last week, DH and I went shopping together. He picked up one of those carts for her to sit in but the strap was gone. I warned him that he would have to pay close attention because she likes to try and climb out and he did pay close attention but close to the end of the shopping trip, she made one quick escape move and fell head first onto the concrete floor of the grocery store. Ouch. No more harm done than a huge bruise and a goose egg but it freaked all of us out. We haven’t let her back in one of those carts yet but she gets so upset when she sees one…. Next time, we’ll make sure it has a strap.
Back at the beginning of July, we had a real bout of the flu bug/summer cold going around our house. I can usually beat the bugs that go and come around but I got quite sick for a few days with a high fever and all. Luckily by the time I got sick, Erika was on the mend and back to daycare so that I could be sick at home all by myself. Erika was sick for quite some time, too. It started with an ear infection at the end of June. We got her checked after her dose of antibiotics and it looked like it was all cleared but a day later she came down with pink eye. New antibiotics for that. Then she developed a fever that we just couldn’t get down. We took her back in and the doctor could see no new infection so we treated her fever. Fast forward another two days and she still wasn’t getting any better and the fever was high. Back to the doctor to diagnose another ear infection. It was a rough few days. What came out of it is that the doctor wondered if we had ever had her checked for enlarged adenoids. Adenoids sit behind the tonsils and when they are enlarged, they can potentially cause more frequent ear infections as well as sleep difficulties etc. He noted that her heavy breathing and some snoring at night could be a symptom. So Erika had her first X-ray and they found that she does have mildly enlarged adenoids and that they think they touch the soft palette. So the doctor’s recommendation was that she see a paediatric ENT specialist and we agreed. Fortunatley, we got an appointment with the same guy she has seen about a year ago on a different matter. The appointment isn’t until October 6th. I’m not particularly worried but I can’t envision the concept of putting a little 2 year old under general anaesthesia to remove these things. We’ll just have to wait and hear out the specialist’s opinion and recommendation.
Time to go and do some more things. Now that summer vacation is over, I have to get back to the gym (I was going quite regularly at lunch time before our trip) and to work towards losing that weight so we can start TTC #2 hopefully sometime next year.
Uli
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