Only one more sleep until Mom leaves.   Gah!  There is a balance between preparing Lucy that Nana has to go home (she isn't big on quick changes) and not making her think about it too soon.  She sees planes in the sky and says, "Nana!  Airport!", so I think she understands a bit, but I am sure she'll miss her buddy when we have to say goodbye.  I am pulling a bit of a Scarlett O'Hara on this one:  "I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow."  I am sure I'll be saying that tomorrow, too.

In the meantime, we have been lucky to get some really nice weather.  Three days in a row!  We have been going out to the park as much as we can.  It turns out Lucy has a favourite park, which is NOT the one we went to one day!  I thought she'd like to go to the park by the ocean, which is beautiful, but she burst into tears when we got there and through her crying said, "Choo Choo Park!"  The park at the absolute other end of town.  Before kids I would have said there is no way that I would drive all the way across town to appease a nearly two year old, but I can tell you that now I eat my words.  A lot.  We  had a great time at her beloved Choo Choo Park.  

Baby Eva chillin' at the park

 

 

 

Up, up and AWAY!

Lucy's new friend

Lucy LOVES to jump.  Really loves it.  If it were a world she could design it would be made of trampolines with couches and beds made specifically for bouncing.  The cold wintery weather makes it a challenge to help her run and bounce off energy while being cooped up inside without ruining the furniture.  Luckily for us, our good friends Andrew, Elizabeth and Laura invited us to Inflatable World.  A dream come true for Lucy!  She ran, jumped, bounced, and rolled until her heart was content.  What a happy couple of hours for her!  It was great fun watching how much fun she was having.  Philip and I tag teamed looking after Lucy.  He did great and made balancing on an overly inflated plastic castle while guiding a two year old look easy.  Maybe it was.  Or should be.  I, however, did not make it look easy.  Or graceful.  On my second inflatable, a dome that you can climb up surrounded by a walk way with netting about ten feet high all around it, I took one step and sunk up to my knees.  I am a little sensitive about the baby weight anyway and really cursed the extra cookies have been eating.  I took another step and fell over.  Luckily I had pushed Lucy up to the walkway and she was fine.  While she was crawling around like a champ, I tried to get over to her to "help" her.  Some help I was!  I finally got up on my feet and took another step towards the walkway.  Not only did I fall over, but I fell off the walkway, rolled onto my back and was hanging off of the entire inflatable.  The net held me in, but I took the entire wall with me.  It must have been a sight with a grown woman laughing her head off with both feet in the air.  I couldn't move one inch. Andrew had to haul me out.  I could see other parents looking at me and I couldn't tell if they were laughing with me or at me.  After falling off it for the second time, I am pretty sure they were laughing at me.  Inflatable World might be a thing for Philip and Lucy in the future!  

 


Two nights ago we had a bit of a hard time with little Eva.  She has cradle cap on her eyebrows and has had it for a long time, but in the space of two days it got really red and angry looking and the whites of her eyes turned a deep rose colour. She wasn't herself and wasn't sleeping well.  Our midwife thought it might be an infection, so we ended up in the after-hours pediatric assessment unit to have her checked out.  They were cautious about the infection because they didn't want it to be a system-wide infection and admitted her overnight to administer antibiotics intravenously.  I was OK for awhile even though we knew there was an IV coming up.  I was brave until we walked into the treatment unit with the bed where I knew I'd have to give my tiny daughter up for the doctor to put her line in.  I told the doctor that I'd likely cry all the way through it because we had lost Ella on three years ago.  Luckily the nurse that was with us remembered Ella and us well and made it all OK.  She talked to Eva and told her how brave her sister was and that she knew Eva was brave like her sister.  I was hanging on to a thread and was nearly through it when I looked over and saw the needle in Eva's hand.  I lost it.  The cracks in my heart that had been shattered and tenuously mended after we lost Ella broke open all over again.  At that minute it was as if we were losing Ella all over again.  I'm not sure that feeling that we will lose another daughter will ever quite leave us and it took awhile for my heart to understand that Eva wasn't going anywhere and that she'd be OK.  We passed an uneventful and fairly sleepless night in the hospital and woke up to a cheery Eva with clear eyes and less painful looking eyebrows.  We spent the day in the hospital while the antibiotics kicked in and then went home around dinner time.  She is looking even better today and has slept really well.  The poor thing had her six week immunisations today, so she got jabbed twice more.  She is brave like her big sister though and just cried a little bit.  It just amazes me how resilient kids are.  They are my little heroes.  

Little Eva after getting her IV put in

Not feeling so hot

We have found if you don't laugh in hard situations, you cry.

The only place I wanted Eva

 Thanks to those of you who have let me know this site works.  It is a great way to keep in touch and I love hearing from you, too!

Lots of love from all of us!

PS...

We thought that Eva looked nothing like her sisters when we brought her home until we found this photo of LUCY!  They look a lot alike here!  Eva was just a wee bit bigger ;)