G'n'R Out West

For this post I just have to start at the end and move back to the start, because I am so excited that she peed.

We spend the weekend camping in the mountains with our friend’s Lisa, Andrew and their baby Blake.  Blake and Lisa had been sick before the weekend and Andrew got sick while we were camping.  We knew there was some risk we’d get sick…but I’m never afraid of a little virus!

On Sunday Adelle was very tired by naptime and slept for around 3 hours.  She woke up with a fever of 103 and was a bit of a mess.  After her nap we were able to get her to drink a small amount of juice but mostly she just wanted to lie around on Greg or I.  We couldn’t get her interested in anything.  She was doing a combination of sleeping and just sitting with her eyes half open.  I was moderately concerned as in the past when she has been sick she has been much more active. 

However, by 9:30 pm her fever broke, she woke up a little groggy at first, but then quickly became giddy.  I asked her if she wanted water, she said she wanted juice (smart cookie – juice is not readily available on normal occasions in this house).  She drank some juice and ate yogurt and crackers.  Then she bounced into action.  There was running, squealing jumping, the transition was unbelievable. 

At 11pm she told me she had to go pee (which in and of itself is not uncommon).  We went to the bathroom, she sat on the potty and much to my amazement she went pee.  She was so excited and so was I.  We ran upstairs to wake up Greg and tell him the fabulous news.  After our little family celebration, she told me she was tired and we did our normal bedtime routine and back to sleep she went.  These little milestones certainly do happen when you least expect them to.

Monday she woke up fevered again and spent most of the morning lying on me in much the same fashion as the night before.  She puked once and shortly after that she started feeling better.  We spent a while outside and then came in for lunch.  After lunch she was a total goof.  She spent some time lounging on the couch and I was told she was talking with her father.

She quickly went into decline by naptime and shortly there after was in bed again.  The evening she seemed normal but tired.  Last night she was up at 4am wide awake and happy…thanks to Greg for spending some quality time with her while I slept!

Now, back to the camping…

We had a fabulous time camping.  On Friday, our friend’s Dana and Mark joined us for a little hike. Adelle spent most of the hike in the backpack mostly happy except for a 20 min period of screaming which instead of being the start of her nap ended up somehow totally rejuvenating her and making her very inquisitive and pleasant for the walk back down.  She had a great time exploring a mountain lake and then walked for a good hour back down towards the car. 

The last few km she asked to be back in the backpack and she spend the rest of they day very happy and excited to be camping.  We spent most of our evening with our friends and the kids played fairly well together.  Of course it was always best for them to play with their surroundings since as soon as toys came into the picture there was usually fight…doesn’t matter how many dump trucks and shovels are available there is only ever one that really matters. 

The most amazing thing happened on Saturday.  We went on another hike, just the three of us.  Adelle wanted to walk at the start of the hike, and so she did.  What we didn’t expect is that our kid walked for 3 HOURS!!!  Well, 2 1/2 since we did stop for lunch.  We travelled a whopping 2.9 km in that three hours, but to her credit there was a lot of climbing up during that time.  She did fabulous.  We were just thrilled.  Mostly, she was in search of mushrooms and insisted I take a picture of every single on we passed (I deleted most of the mushroom pictures, but I left a few on just because she loved them so much).  The only way to keep her moving in a forward direction was the promise of a good rock to jump off of or some exciting looking mushrooms to admire. 

The last 20 min of the walk were not as fun as there were many tears, and she was refusing to go in the backpack.  I picked her up for a cuddle and she fell asleep within minutes.  We transferred her back into the backpack and we continued with our hike. 

We are so thrilled with our little hiker.  It is just amazing to see her do so well.  On one side it can be frustrating to walk so slowly when you were anticipating an invigorating hike, but then again, with Adelle, you spend much more time appreciating the world around you…and a little parental pride for your child’s accomplishments certainly never hurt either!

We had a great time camping in general.  Adelle slept well at night.  Our new little baby causes me a little discomfort but there is only one more good camping weekend left before the nights get colder then we feel like dealing with…so we are looking forward to one last trip.  It will be sad to put away the tent for the year, Adelle just LOVES camping.  I hope our next baby likes it too.

 Hard to believe our little girl is already two. 

We had Adelle’s birthday party on Sunday, and then had her Godfather John and his finance Angela over for her actual birthday dinner.  We had blueberry pie, which as avid readers would remember is Adelle’s favorite dessert.

Sleep:
It has been great for a long time.  Very rarely does she need help, and it is almost never that we get to sleep with her.  Sometimes she needs some night time cuddles and mostly it happens so rarely that I love it.   It used to be that she would sleep in right until 7:30, so in the mornings I would hardly see her as I would just be wisking her out the door to daycare.  The last few months she’s been waking up well before 7 so it has given us some fun time to hang out a bit in the morning.  It is nice to get a little bit more time with her each day.

She is still napping.  She naps great at home, but at daycare there are some days she won’t nap, and often she just naps for  1/2 an hour then tries the patience of the caregivers. 

Just last week she moved up into the toddler room at daycare (much to her disappointment…she likes the babies).  Although, she will miss the babies, I think it makes more sense from a napping perspective as some of the other kids in that room don’t nap either, so she’ll fit in better there.

She is still sleeping in her crib.  Her new room is mostly set up, and she loves it, but hasn’t really shown any interest in sleeping in their yet.  In the fall we will start to work on encouraging that transition.

Eating:
She eats and eats and then after that she’ll usually have a snack.   Often she eats a lot at breakfast time and lunch, and dinners can often be much smaller.  More and more often she is refusing to eat what we’ve served her at dinner (I think this is a combination of being tired if she hasn’t napped at daycare and not really loving what we are offering).  If she won’t eat it we don’t give her any substitutions (we are mean).  She still sleeps through the night, although sometimes she wakes up VERY hungry.  Which we are ok with.  And she appears to be remarkably ok with it too.  She will complain a bit about the meal, but mostly if she doesn’t want to eat it she just says she is done and we will often still have a lovely evening.      

Language:
My goodness how things change.  She speaks quite clearly now and mostly in sentences.  Sometimes other people need interpretation, but more often than not others can understand a good deal of what she says.  It is amazing to hear the things that come out of that child’s mouth.  Mostly they make us laugh because so much of what she says comes from what we say.  It is also amazing to hear some of her original thoughts.  Kids are just so darn smart.  For a while she was adding ‘y’ to the end of every word, that has slowed down a bit, but she still does it…just to irritate me I think.

She has really started in on the questions too.  I am sure this is nothing compared to what I hear 3 year olds are like…but it is a change for her.  She needs to know everything…and usually asks the same question multiple times.  I am not sure if she doesn’t understand the answer or if she just wants to ask again.  I’m trying to figure that out.

Personality:
She is a total goof.  She thinks pretty much everything is a joke….unless it is devastating that is.  There is little transition between the worst moment in her life and the best. 

I used to think she was really outgoing, but it seems now she does much better in smaller groups.  With lots of kids around she usually has little to no fun.  With just one kid around, they often get up to all kinds of shenanigans.

Greg has this really irritating habit of giving me a look and making it pretty much impossible to hold a grudge no matter how hard I try.  Adelle is blessed with the same talent and I find it equally irritating.

Teeth:
She has them all, but her two year molars.  She has been complaining a bit about her head hurting and her mouth hurting…but I can’t see anything, maybe they are starting to bug her though.

Bathroom:
She loves the potty and spends lots of time on it.  But has never done the deed as they say.  I am told she also loves the potty at daycare, but has yet to make anything happen there yet either.  I imagine it is coming.

Other stuff:
- One of her favorite pass-times is helping out in the kitchen.  She is endlessly dragging the chair over to the sink or the counter to help us with whatever we are working on.  It has gotten to the point where it really can be super fun.  The only down side is that it is one of Greg’s major pet peeves to have chairs in the kitchen.  On the weekend every time I turn around he is putting a chair away, then as soon as he gets it away Adelle is dragging it back over, it is endless and a little bit funny.

We had a wonderful weekend.  Filled with all sorts of fun birthday plans.  It started out looking like it was going to be stressful…but boy were we wrong.

Friday Adelle was a little under the weather.  She seemed in good spirits, but was warm.  We figured it was just remnants of her everlasting smoker’s cough cold.  We had our friends Roy, Shan and their girls Paityn and Khali over for supper.  Adelle did ok…but she had some real troubles with sharing and eating and generally just getting through life.  It was a bit frustrating for us.  Friday night she got about 6 hours of sleep.  It was really hot and she had a fever and was a big mess.  I was worried about all of our big weekend plans. 

Saturday morning she had no fever and was a joy to be around.  We made some cupcakes for her birthday, I was all done mixing them by the time she woke in the morning, but she was there to see them come out of the oven.  She was very excited about them, but was completely and totally surprisingly ok with not being allowed to eat any…I was shocked. 

After breakfast we made some cookies to give away as thank-yous to our birthday party guests.  Adelle was right up at the counter with me the entire time.  A complete joy to cook with.  She didn’t test the batter once or lose patience with any part of the process.  As always she was shocked that we added breakfast (oatmeal) to the cookies.  Her favorite part was the sprinkles and she took great care and time to ensure each cookie was appropriately sprinkled to her standards. 

We ran a bunch of errands Saturday morning and even though we were seriously pushing naptime by the time we got back she was so patient with us.  Obviously whatever had been plaguing her the night before had mostly passed. 

At naptime we iced the cupcakes and removed them from sight.  Greg did an excellent job putting dogs on all the cupcakes.  Adelle has always had a love for dogs, so we decided dog themed birthday cake was a good idea.  The dogs did not go unnoticed and were well worth the labour!

Saturday night was another rough sleep, but it was hot out again and she had a really hard time falling asleep…poor thing.

Sunday she woke up bright an early and in a great mood.  We put all our cookies in the boxes she’d decorated.  By total coincidence there was exactly one cookie left and I just felt like it was meant to be hers.  She almost fell off her chair when I told her she could eat it before she even ate her breakfast!  Her reaction was totally worth it!  I am not sure if it was the breakfast cookie or just her excitement over knowing something exciting was to happen that morning.  But she was totally exhausting all morning.

She was in a great mood with lots of patience…but I guess I wasn’t.  I spent most of the morning cutting up fruit and veggies for the party.  She spent a fair bit of time ‘helping’ me.  All the while asking ‘what are you doing mama’…over and over and over and over and over and over again.  I felt like a bad mum for being irritated by my child on the day we were celebrating her birth, especially since she was being very pleasant, just a little on the repetitious side.

The birthday party was great.  We had 5 kids of running around age and two babies along with a bunch of adults.  It was boiling hot outside especially in our backyard which gets all the afternoon sun.  The kids had lots of fun running around on the grass, playing on the slide and goofing around in the tent.  After lunch we ran out of shade and headed inside for cupcakes.

I was really looking forward to singing happy birthday to Adelle since she has been singing it to herself for a long time now.  But as it turns out a room of 15 people staring at her is a whole lots less fun then goofing around with her and the birthday song.  She recovered once she got to eat her cupcakes…but if it weren’t for the chocolate she probably wouldn’t have calmed down so quickly.

It was a great party, Adelle was spoiled rotten by all her friends and it is now hard to convince her to leave the house because she mostly wants to just sit around and play with all her fun new toys!

We have arrived home safely from an amazing canoe trip in Northern Ontario.  Apart from some untimely and pretty substantial puking in the first hour of our plane ride home there were no major mishaps.  I apologize to all people within smelling distance of our seats on the airplane! 

We flew up to Thunder Bay to meet with my sister, her family and my dad, then took off into the wilderness for a fun adventure.  Originally Amy and Hugh had planned a canoe trip with 10 portages…but after carrying all our stuff 400m to the put in point from the car everybody seemed to be in agreement that there was no need to stick with that plan.  Instead we opted to have a more relaxed trip around Pickerel Lake.

I love to be with my family since we live so far away, and it is just that much more amazing to have the cousins spend time together.  They certainly had a few ups and downs together, but in general they just had a great time.  Adelle just loves them both so much, it is wonderful to see.

Our days were very relaxed filled with great food, some paddling and lots of relaxing and goofing around.  Each night Adelle was yawning and showing all the appropriate bed time cues by around 8pm.  So the first few nights we took her into the tent right at 8pm and she would explode with energy and basically have a blast goofing around in there until well after 10pm.  It was VERY frustrating.  By the third night we got that she wasn’t really tired.  We would try to keep her out as long as possible, but inevitably she would tell us she was tired (and be acting tired) so we’d take her in.  But instead of getting irritated..we would just enjoy her.  She was such a goofball in there so it was pretty easy to just let go and have fun.  There were a few times each night that I would basically go into an uncontrollable laughing fit because she was just being too darn adorable. Inevitably each night the hilarity would quickly turn to total distress and usually within about 2 minutes of the onset of crying she would be passed out.  She slept quite well most nights.  Although, she did have a pretty good cough, so occasionally she’d wake herself up in a coughing fit. 

Adelle did absolutely amazing in the canoe.  I was a bit nervous about it since last year mainly she nursed the entire time we were on the water…and this year I didn’t have that trick up my sleeve.  But she did so great.  She would sometimes want to have a snuggle for a while, but usually she could be convinced to hang out with her hand in the water or feeling the wind on her face…or tending to her baby who diligently got cleaned very well with lake water a few times each day.

Here is a shot from the campsite we stayed at on both the first and last night of our trip.  The kids are eagerly awaiting dinner.  Adelle’s appetite was in full form all week and there were many comments on her continual ability to consume more food. 

One of the neat things that happened while we were away is that Adelle got into pretending.  Her cousin ChiChi often enjoys being a cat.  So Adelle spent a lot of time imitating him imitating a cat. ‘I cat mama, I cat’.  Adelle has been a cat a lot since.  Today she spent most of our trip to the grocery store being a cat.  She also pretended to be a person…hmmm…and a dragon while we were away.  She knows what a cat is, but the other two had her a bit confused.  The dragon was especially hilarious as I don’t think she knew what it was and her pretending mainly consisted of her yelling the words dragon and fire over and over again.  The picture below is of two cats strolling down the beach.  A beach at a campsite the kids loved…so we stayed two days despite the fact that there was an incredibly indifferent snake that lived amongst us.

Lily is very knowledgeable about nature.  Here Adelle and she are picking bunch berries.  Lily showed Adelle all kinds of wonderful things about the outdoors.  They both seem to have a bit of a love for creepy crawlies…a passion I do not share.  It was neat to see Lily expose Adelle to so much of that stuff….especially when I didn’t need to get that close myself!!

Mostly Adelle hung out with me in the boat but when we did encourage her to travel with Greg she had a great time.  She seemed to be much more independent with Greg than with me.  I think he is much better at encouraging her independence than I am.

On the last night my dad was down at the water filtering our drinking water when a snapping turtle happened upon him.  We watched him for a while, and eventually he disappeared.  He later surprised my dad when he snuck back and tried to snatch the filter hose from him!  It was pretty neat to see such a large turtle.

I can hardly wait for our next canoe trip…although I think we might just go camping next year…since going with a 6 month old in addition to a 3 year old seems significantly more daunting then what we did this year…but we shall see.