He's arrived!

I now have to refer to my two boys as Big A and Little A - Little A put in an appearance at 00:58, May 19th - I went in to the maternity ward on the monday night thinking I was just having breathless Braxton Hicks, and it turns out I was 2 cm dilated!!! So we opted to go for it, and now have a beautiful baby boy to show for it.

Everything was seamless and perfect - I could not ask for a better baby, delivery, or hospital staff!!!!

We have been home a week and I am just getting to emails and the blog, and will post more in the coming days, but for now, we are healthy, happy and enjoying life!!!

Mom arrives tomorrow

My Mom is coming in from Nova Scotia tomorrow to help look after A while we get our heads around being parents of two versus parents of one. It will be so great to see her, as I only see her every year to year and a half, and she hasn't seen A since he was one, so that alone will provide a huge change.

I am already planning the requisite trip to the Swedish Mosh Pit: being from Nova Scotia, she is woefully deprived of her Swedish big-box stores, and besides, that is where my water broke with A last time, so I am eager to tempt fate a second time and get this ball rolling! My OB has assured me she is on call at the Hospital on Saturday and Sunday of this long weekend, so as long as I don't go into labour Monday, we are completely set.

Meanwhile, Dad, Alison and Charlotte are off to Pasley for the long weekend. It's been so hard to stay away from there - it's a self-imposed practical thing, really, being boat-access only and a good 2 hours away from my hospital if anything were to happen, but I sure miss the place! A loves it up there, and as long as I can throw him into his MEC "muddy-buddy" with his rain boots, he is good to play outside for hours.

Happy long-weekend, everyone!

It's raining - must be time for the Vancouver International Children's Festival!

It's supposed to pour all week...it must be time for the Children's Festival! I had all sorts of grand plans to go with Janine and her daughter, K, hang out, see a show, take a picnic, and do all sorts of fun things, and not only is it calling for showers pretty much all week, A has developed a rather vicious snotty nose. Aaron brought it home with him from work, and the two of them are all about soup this week. Drat! Double drat!

It would be nice to get out and check out some of the action at Vanier park; their standard booths are so fantastic, and the mainstage is so entertaining that I have found in past years that you don't even need to buy a ticket to a particular performance. That is, until the wee ones start clamoring for Bobs and Lolo. When the weather is good, it also is a pretty spectacular place to be - on the waterfront of False Creek, just a hop, skip and a jump away from Granville Island, Yaletown and English Bay.


Getting out to one of our magical Vancouver spots like Vanier Park make me almost forget the disheartening Canucks loss this week. A still adamantly refuses to take off his jersey, and even the meat lady at the deli counter is commenting on how sweet yet sad it is that he is still so firmly behind the Canucks. A asks me every night if we can watch hockey, still picks up his goalie stick and puck and stands in net, with plaintive calls for "Luu?" and still spontaneously shouts "He shoots, he scores!".

Oh dear, a week to match the weather!

The Last Belly Shot

Just for posterity - with a week to go, something tells me this is one of my last shots for navel-gazing!

The Last Pedicure

I did it.

I finally got my "final" pedicure before the baby: one must have good-looking toes for the hospital, after all!

I also indulged in some retail therapy today, figuring that if I was going to shortly have three boys in the house to look after, (one big, two small), I had better work on my 'girlie-ness' and so bought some sticky frosted lip gloss and the most ridiculous white summer purse you could imagine. It is so O.T.T. even I am not sure how I am going to pull it off, but it is a nice foil for the army-green diaper bag that has been my constant companion these last two and a half years.

So, with my sparkly pink toes and ridiculous white bag, I sit tonight with my fingers crossed for the Canucks, and continue to contemplate my navel.

(I promise more cerebral fodder the next post!!!)

Pillow Fights

Aaron and I sleep in a king-size bed. A routinely crawls into bed with us sometime after midnight, and we often wake up to either a head or set of feet next to us. He likes to form an "H", utilizing all available space between us, and even creating more.

The other night, I asked Aaron to keep the middle pillow in the centre, as that was "A's pillow" for when he crawled in with us.

I was told I was pandering, and if he wanted to crawl in with us, he could fend for himself between us, whether or not there was a pillow for him or not.

I sheepishly agreed I was being too accommodating, and thus said nothing last night when Aaron took "A's pillow" for himself early in the evening, leaving a pillow gap. However, when A arrived in our bed at the customary hour, he proceeded to flail around looking for his pillow and then decided to steal mine as his was no longer apparent.

So I was the one that kept getting woken up with little or no pillow, and I ended up with the broken sleep.

I told Aaron we are re-instating A's pillow.

"O Canada"

He almost knows all the words, too!

Ladies and Gentlemen, place your bets!

So the race is on.

Baby has dropped, and I am now experiencing that exquisitely odd sensation of feeling his head against my bladder, and his shoulders bumping up against my hip bones. Aaron and I watch his nightly rolls, and he cannot imagine what it must feel like. I am at a bit of a loss for words myself, other than the obvious. This is a part of the pregnancy I will miss - Peanuts' barrel-rolls and random elbows sticking out of my belly, rendering me a good cast choice for Alien.

When do you think he's going to put in an appearance?

The books suggest that after the head engages, it means the onset of labour. Clearly, we are not in that percentage, as I am still sitting here writing.

Aaron thinks we aren't going to make it past Mothers' Day.

I'm more inclined to think he's going to come on the long weekend, probably on a Sunday or on the holiday Monday, just because that's when these things seem to happen.

In the meantime I am vaccuming, cleaning and stocking the fridge as if getting ready for a major power outage or snowstorm.

Anyone care to place a bet on the date?

He's dropped!

I am a different shape today - the baby has dropped, and I can suddenly breathe again!

Joy!

I predict a baby by the long weekend.

It's May, and the countdown has begun!

It's May - in less than one month, I will have another tiny, dependent, precious, amazing little person to call my own, and welcome into our little family. Wow. How one's life can change in a month!

Amidst the running around, trying vainly to cross all my T's and dot all my I's before the first-six-weeks-vortex occurs, I am staring more and more at my belly, wondering what he is going to be like. Who will he look like? Will I get to claim more features on Peanut? (All I can boast on A is his eyes and ears - everything else is Daddy) Will he be long like A? I feel him still trying to do barrel-rolls in this increasingly-tight space called my uterus, and wonder how he can be so nimble in such a cramped space. But he manages. Sometimes I feel a foot, sometimes a bum sticking straight out. The other day, I could swear I felt an elbow. Will he be born with hair? How much will he weigh?

I keep happily tripping over the "won'ts" - he won't have his first haircut at four days old to accommodate an IV, Aaron won't have to change his first diaper through the holes of an incubator. I won't miss my second son's first four hours of life.

For all intents and purposes, this is to be a totally boring, normal, pedestrian birth, and for that I am thankful. I can't wait to drown in normalcy, enjoy my new baby and have just a c-section to recover from.

As A would say, staring at my belly and making the "come-towards" motion with his hand; "come OUT baby! come OUT!"