Happy Birthday Annalise Valerie!

I can't believe you're two years old today. You're becoming such a little character, and you're such a joy to have around (aside from those toddler tantrums, of course).

Just in time for your birthday, you're finally over an ear infection that has been bothering you for over a week.. We are so grateful that you're (almost) completely yourself again. We were able to enjoy a birthday party for you on Saturday, with just a few close friends and family.. You were most excited about "cake", and would shout "presents!" when someone would walk in with a gift. You were happy to share your presents with your little friends; we all really enjoyed watching you playing with your new blocks together!
Today we went to the Saskatoon Farm for lunch with Oma & Opa Janzen, and then back home to play with all of your things!

Here are a few things I want to remember about 2-year-old Annalise:
- You love cookies, as most two year olds probably do. When we ask you what you would like for any meal, your answer is either "cookies!" or "oatmeal!" You love oatmeal, too, and can often eat two full packets of the instant stuff.

- You are learning your numbers and alphabet ("A,B's" as you say) so quickly! You can already identify almost all of the letters, struggling a little bit with 'v' (you think it's 'y') and 'w' (that's a hard one to say!) The first letter you always put in your alphabet puzzle is 'o'. Your favourite number is '8', and was the first number you were able to identify. I remember walking around in WalMart a couple of months ago, and you pointed to an 8 on a sign and said "8!". I couldn't help but think it was just a coincidence, but sure enough you proved it on several occasions!

- You love to sing with me! Before naps and sometimes bedtime, I ask you what you would like to sing, and you say "Jesus!" (Jesus Loves Me), and then "sunshine!" (You Are My Sunshine). You know many of the words, and sing along. I love it - I hope you'll always like to sing.

- You love Toopy & Binoo, but not Mike the Knight or Thomas.

- You say "like it" and shake your head when you don't like something. These days that's happening at the dinner table more often than we'd like. You say "like it...more...too bad" (don't like it anymore, too bad). Because when you don't want to eat something, Mommy says, "too bad for you!" We'll see if your good appetite comes back when you're completely over this sickness.

- Mommy takes you to Mother Goose every Tuesday morning, and you love it! It takes you a little bit to warm up when we get there, but once you're comfortable, you love to run around that big open room! You remember the rhymes well, and you love it when we sing them at home too.


We are looking forward to watching you develop in many more years to come. Thank you for keeping us on our toes, and keeping life entertaining! We love you, little girl.

Meet Archer!

Well, our sweet boy is here! Archer William arrived on Monday, July 30 at 7:01am, after a quick 4 1/2 hours of labour.  He weighed 7lbs, 15oz and was 20 1/2 inches long.  Our first three weeks with Archer have been a bit of a whirlwind; even more than we expected.  The first week home was just our little family - Derek was able to have the week off from work, so we just relaxed around home and adjusted to life with another baby!  The next week, my parents came to visit and my mom helped me with things around the house - what a blessing!

Last week we experienced a bit of stress, as we had to spend some time at the Children's Hospital with Archer... Here's what happened:

At my 36 week prenatal visit, my midwife, Kathleen, heard a very high heart rate as she listened at the beginning of our appointment; it only lasted maybe a minute and then went right back down to normal & didn't happen again the several times she checked while I was there. At the time we didn't think too much of it, because we had never heard that before at any of my appointments. 

When Archer was born, upon his assessment, Kathleen heard a high heart rate again but again didn't think we needed to do too much about it (besides keeping a closer watch on his heart rate anytime she would see him). 

On Wednesday of last week we had our 2 week visit with Kathleen and she heard that high heart rate twice in the 45 minutes or so that we were with her. She decided to do a phone consult with a pediatrician at the children's hospital just to see what our next steps should be. At this time we had NO idea what it could possibly be, and even Kathleen couldn't say what it might be as she didn't have any experience with this. 

Later that day I got a call back from Kathleen & the pediatrician she spoke with suggested that we should have an ECG done initially. That night we went to the hospital in High River and had an ECG done, and then we waited to hear from Kathleen again on what to do next. 

On Thursday morning Kathleen called after speaking with the cardiologist at the children's hospital, and she let us know that they wanted to monitor Archer for at least 24 hours, as well as run some more tests. So, at around 11 we left home for the hospital, after dropping Annalise off in Okotoks. 

When we arrived at the hospital they admitted Archer & showed us to our room, and then took us up to the cardiology clinic to have an Echo done and another ECG, and then they hooked him up to a holter monitor which would stay on for 24 hours. 

Later in the afternoon we met with the cardiologist (she was wonderful, and completely assuring. We are thankful for her!) who told us that the tests (echo & ECG) came back completely normal. This means that the function & structure of Archer's heart is all great, and there hasn't been any damage to his heart from these episodes. 

At that time, she told us what she suspected was happening, that he has something called SVT, which is quite common. She would just need to see a run of SVT (that high heart rate) on his heart monitor to confirm that that was indeed what it was. (Which is why we were staying 24 hours!)

On Friday, after 24 hours, Archer hadn't my had any runs of high heart rate so the doc suggested we stay another 24 hours & hope that we catch one. If we didn't see one in that time she said she would be comfortable sending us home & said we should just be sure to check his heart rate a few times a day so that if he had any runs, we would hopefully catch them.

On Saturday morning, it didn't appear that he had any runs but when the doc came in at 9:30, she said he had JUST had one, 15 minutes before. I had been feeding Archer & then snuggling him and didn't notice a thing! 

So, finally it was confirmed that he does in fact have SVT, and they wanted to start him on medication right away - which meant another 48 hour stay at the hospital, to monitor him ON the medication, making sure he accepted it well and that it did its job.  He did incredibly well, with none of the side effects that they were watching for, so on Monday afternoon, finally, we were discharged & sent home.

It's been quite an adjustment having an infant on medication, and having to give him that medication 4 times a day (every 6 hours); but he is accepting it really well, so at least it's not a struggle when it comes down to actually giving it to him! 

From here, we'll have periodic follow up appointments with the cardiologist, and eventually she will try to wean him off of the medication. A large percentage of infants grow out of SVT by a year, so that's the hope when we wean him off. 

Wearing the holter monitor (it was pretty rotten having all of those cords connected to him for 4 days!)

Sweet boy.

Thank you all so much for your prayers.. 

D.

A Little Update

I keep thinking our lives are going to slow down!  I'm not sure what we're so busy with, but weeks just seem to fly by, with us left in the dust thinking, "what happened? I wanted to get ______ done, but there was just no time."  Here are some of the things going on around the Janzen household:

I managed to get kids' rooms sorted out and nearly completed.  We finally decided where to put who: Annalise & Cole are now sharing a room, and the baby will go into what was Annalise's room.  It just seemed to make sense to place the two sleep-through-the-night'ers in the same room - rather than having an infant who wakes up every few hours keeping our toddler awake too! Not to mention naps during the day - Annalise is finally on a really great schedule for her nap(s) and it will be nice to keep her on that schedule as much as possible.. One solid nap in the late morning, and then (depending on time of day, etc), another "nap" (or more often, quiet time in her crib) for an hour in the afternoon.  I am SO grateful that we've gotten her used to having quiet time in the afternoon - I think I'll appreciate that a lot when Baby #2 is in the picture.  I had a lot of fun putting Cole & Annalise's room together - it was a fun challenge trying to figure out how to make it suitable for a 10-year old BOY, and a 16-month old GIRL!  I promise to post pictures once the finishing touches are done.

The transition into a new room for Annalise went so much smoother than I had imagined! I think I had a harder time with it than she did, actually. It's such a strange feeling (and I know I'm going to feel this a lot) making room for another baby .. especially before I really KNOW this baby.  It felt like I was taking something away from Annalise taking her out of her own big room that she's used to, and moving her into just a small "corner" of  Cole's room.  The first night in her room she cried a bit longer going to sleep, but then proceeded to sleep peacefully through the night.  Since then, she's been a little weird with her sleep, but yesterday (after an especially rough night) a cold that she must have been fighting finally surfaced, so I think once that has passed, we'll be back to peacefully sleeping through.

Derek is working between raindrops, and between weekend commitments, to build an extension on our deck in the back.  It's going a bit slower than he had initially planned, but he's getting work done on it here and there, and hoping to have it mostly done by the time Baby #2 comes.

Annalise seems to be changing every day & learning something new.  It seems like she's got another word in her vocabulary every-other day.  One of her newest favourite words is "baby", just in time (and she uses it mostly correctly, too!).  She's definitely become a toddler... this girl gets into EVERYTHING!  Some days I feel like I'm just following her around saying, "no, no Annalise, don't touch that" or "please don't climb on there". Luckily, at the end of most days I can just giggle about her crazy little personality & all the mischief she gets into during the day.  I'm so happy to say that I'm enjoying her so much more every day.


Baby #2 is growing well, and I'm still feeling pretty good.  I am 34.5 weeks now, and certainly starting to feel the aches & pains and discomfort of getting close to Baby Day!  Yesterday I vacuumed & cleaned our floors, and then I had to sit down for a while.  I had forgotten how exhausted such small chores could make me feel.  Simply bending over to pick something up is a pretty big ordeal! I'm doing my absolute best to LET IT GO when it comes to having a perfectly clean house.. that's pretty tough for me, but I realize a clean house might just be something of the past once I have 2 children to tend to. 


I imagine I'll be grateful for Annalise to simply be entertained - even if it means scattering the contents of my cupboards all over the kitchen floor.


Have a great summer all; stay tuned for another update, probably after Baby #2 makes his/her entrance into the world!
D.

Holy Moodswings, Mama.

There's another baby on the way. Woah. And not all that far away now - I'm officially in my third trimester; 27 weeks and 5 days, to be exact.  The second trimester has absolutely flown past (I suppose I shouldn't be surprised; everyone told me this pregnancy would.)  Baby and I are doing well - I'm feeling plenty of movement, much more I think than I did with Annalise, which is pretty cool.. the feeling of a baby moving inside of me is one I will cherish forever, it's really like nothing else.
I say this often: I'm very blessed when it comes to my pregnancies.. consistently, with all 3 pregnancies, I've had only a couple of weeks of feeling a bit lousy & having a really yucky appetite, but beyond my first trimester, just feeling really great.  There are of course days where I just feel pregnant and would rather lay around all day than do anything else, and I can feel those days coming a bit more often now as I get bigger & closer to the end, but I really can't complain.
Here's something that's a bit different this time around though. The mood swings. Oh, the mood swings. My poor, poor husband (and poor poor me, if I do say so myself!)  The funny thing about mood swings during pregnancy is that they can disguise themselves really well.  In the moment, I just have no idea why I'm flying off the handle because there are a couple of crumbs laying on the kitchen counter, and I'm the one who has to wipe them up.  I certainly wouldn't completely discredit the things that bother me when I'm feeling particularly emotional, but I would say that they are just slightly exaggerated; in the moment though, they sure don't feel that way! And I sure don't realize that they're being caused by this pregnancy!  That is one thing I look forward to saying goodbye to once this baby is born (and once post-partum hormones clear up; those are pretty rough too).
In other news, Annalise has officially started walking! Last Saturday morning we were relaxing around the house, and she suddenly stood up and took off! We were so surprised, and so pleased! It was a pretty exciting morning.  Here's a link to a video of the big event: Annalise's First Steps
She's been practising, slowly but surely, ever since and is just so proud of herself.
I think that about sums up any news in the Janzen household; we're busy (swamped even) with getting our yard & house ready for the summer, and for this new baby.  Derek has plans to add an extension to our deck in the backyard in the next month or so, and I've got plans to update Annalise's room, to accommodate another baby!  Not to mention, we've got very few little touch-ups in our kitchen to get it totally finished off - and then I can finally post some before & after photos of that project!  This is such an exciting time - we are loving our house & the projects that it comes with. :)

D.

"I'm standing and I can't get down"

"They grow up so fast, don't they?" If I had a nickel for every time I've heard this in the past year, I would be a rich woman.  Well, maybe not rich, but I would have a lot of nickels.  And it's absolutely true - they do grow up fast.  I'm watching my daughter standing against the coffee table (getting mad because she's stuck standing ... am I supposed to help her every time she gets frustrated about this?), with drool all down her chin because she's cutting more teeth (this will be 7 or 8 teeth in about a month) and I'm thinking wow, she sure has grown a lot... in the last MONTH, not to mention how much she's grown & developed since she was born! And I love it. I am so not at the point yet where I miss her infant days - she's becoming such a little character, it's so much more rewarding than the days where she was a crying little lump!  I find myself just looking forward to each new stage, rather than completely embracing the stage that she's at.  Maybe that's not the best way to do this, but I just see how much happier she is as she learns something new (well, until she gets stuck standing up).

Now that Annalise is so much more content, I'm starting to feel much less nervous about bringing another baby into the family.  I am obviously still kept very busy with her, but she is also so capable of entertaining herself a lot of the time throughout the day too; what a relief!  And I think it's safe to say, we've got naps figured out... finally.  And boy, do I appreciate that.  It was a long run of fighting her to sleep at all during the day, and it took a lot out of me.  It is a good feeling to have a routine established; and I can't take the credit - Annalise just finally figured it out.  I really hated hearing that when I was trying to get her to take proper naps - but it is true, they eventually just figure it out on their own.  I was persistent in offering naps, twice a day, and leaving her in her crib for an hour no matter what, and I do think that helped. (Not to mention, knowing I would get that 1 hour break helped me maintain my sanity!)
We are blessed.

Until next time!
D.

Two Very Different Birthdays

We're settling down this weekend after a whirlwind of activity in the last couple of weeks.

My mom & dad came to visit from Ontario for about 5 days, surrounding Annalise's and the twins' birthdays.  We had a really great (really really busy) few days together, and as always, I wished they could stay just a few days longer!  It was really wonderful to watch Annalise interact with my parents; the last time they saw her, she was just 5 months old, so she wasn't doing too much interacting yet!  She was a bit shocked to see them in our house the morning that she woke up to them here, but it didn't take long before she totally warmed up to having them around.

Leading up to these days, I didn't really think about how different it was going to be this year remembering the twins' birthday.  I thought about them often throughout that day, but somewhat unfortunately, their birthday seemed to be overshadowed by Annalise's birthday which was coming the very next day.  We had quite a party planned, so there was a lot to do that day before.  We visited the cemetery that evening with Derek & I and both sets of our parents; we had brought a little bouquet of flowers, and each of us placed a couple down for Michael & Gabriel.  That felt like a really nice tradition.  We didn't have to say anything really at all, just quietly think about them.  I can't believe it's been two years since they came & went.

It still frustrates me that grief doesn't show up when you expect it to.  On Michael & Gabriel's birthday, I thought about them, but I didn't feel that grief... not that day.  It seemed to be in the days following that I really remembered those awful days.  We went to Lake Louise on the Sunday following Annalise's birthday (her birthday was the Saturday).  The thing was (and I didn't think it would affect me like it did), we had gone to Lake Louise for the very same event just a couple of days before the twins were born.  I couldn't help but keep thinking about that day 2 years ago, and the hope that we still had, knowing that we were going to have twins.  I was having a good time, but there was just a lingering empty feeling while we were walking around.  Not to mention it was well past nap-time AND lunch-time for Annalise, so you can imagine how happy she was.

All in all, we've had a really great couple of weeks.  Annalise's birthday was a really fun day packed with lots of friends & lots of food! She was such a good girl the entire day.  This year, I found it bittersweet to celebrate Annalise's birthday just following remembering the twins' birthday, I wonder if it will always be a bit bittersweet.  My fear is that I'll stop thinking about the twins like I feel like I should.  I feel like there should always be a bit of sadness on that day, otherwise it feels like we're forgetting them.

This post has felt a bit scatter-brained, and for that, I apologize.  I've been thinking a lot about how I can get this into writing, how I can describe the way that those two birthdays bumped up next to each other felt for me.  I hope that this post makes a little bit of sense!

Here are a few pictures from Annalise's birthday, and our visit with Mom & Dad.

 The Birthday girl in her new forward-facing carseat!

Opening presents

Pretty excited about her birthday cake!

Feelin a little chilly at Lake Louise!

As always, thanks for reading.

D.

On the Move

Goodness, can our girl crawl.  It didn't take long for her to take off & start exploring all over this house!  Derek & I have said several times in the last couple of days "Wow, she's getting fast!"  She's starting to chase the cats around, much to their chagrin.
It's funny too, I always said I wouldn't be big on the whole "babyproofing" thing (outlet covers, latches on doors, etc), but I'm learning (again) that I need not judge until I've experienced.  I'm already wondering how I can make it easier to be sure Annalise doesn't get into things she shouldn't.  I've already installed a baby gate in our kitchen doorway.  That way I have the option of keeping her just in the living room, where she can (mostly) keep out of trouble.
It's been another lesson in selflessness for me, because I have even less of my day to get things done that I'd like to get done.  I spend much of my day chasing her around, making sure she's not pulling cat fur, or playing with cords, or tipping over the cats' water.  The difference between this lesson in selflessness & the lesson I've been learning in the weeks before she's been able to crawl is the reward of her joy now that she's mobile! She is a different baby now than she was even 3 weeks ago.  I'm exhausted at the end of a day, but there are less days that I feel so emotionally exhausted because I've been dealing with a cranky baby.
In my last post, I talked about the struggle that we've been having with getting Annalise to drink anything out of a cup, well I am absolutely pleased to let you know that she's got it mastered! For a couple of days we were feeding her milk from a teaspoon, until one day, she finally opened her mouth & accepted the cup! We are so pleased, especially because she pretty much decided she was done with breastfeeding around the same time.  What a big girl.

Here's a photo we took on Christmas Eve; I haven't been taking many photos, mostly just videos!  I'll work on that. :)

In other news, I had an appointment this morning with my midwife & all is well! I got the results of the early ultrasound I had a few weeks ago (mostly just to be sure of how many babies are in there, because if we were to have another twin pregnancy, we would want to be very careful, very early on).  Baby is healthy, mama is healthy.  I heard the heartbeat for the first time.. that's always exciting & makes it feel real again.  I forgot how quiet & tiny the heartbeat sounds at the beginning!
We've been keeping really busy with some renovations we're doing in our kitchen; we started before Christmas, and the end seems to be in sight!  Finally I'm gaining my energy back, so I'm a bit more useful in the reno department!  I will post about the reno one of these days very soon - we're keeping the progress photos to ourselves until the project is finished!

Until next time...
 D.