Post Op Update

I am in a world of hurt. Keep in mind that I have given birth twice without drugs so when I say that my hand is the worst pain I have ever felt... I mean it. My fingers are swollen and they look like sausages. I cannot use my right arm at all... typing this by chicken pecking with my left hand is taking a while. Whenever I am out of bed for an hour or so I am exhausted and need to rest again. I have been taking pain killers every 4 hours since the morphine wore of yesterday afternoon. The only time I have any relief is when I am asleep... which was only about 2 hours last night.

The Dr. said there was alot of scar tissue that had to be removed from inside my wrist joint and he had to cut through several muscles in my hand in order to do so. I spoke with the Dr.'s office this morning and I have an appointment at the hospital for June 4th to have my cast changed and stitches removed. Until then I just rest... which is easier said than done when you have two little kids that are going stir crazy already.

Dave has been doing a great job cooking and taking care of the girls and me. He has made sure that I have had the pain killers on time too which is good because my head is so fuzzy right now. I think I would enjoy all his efforts more if I didn't feel like a bag of crap.

Hannah has been cute... she has given me her favourite notty blanket and her Care Bears to try and make me feel better. Plus she has been giving my 'owie' lots of kisses better. Dave took a couple of pictures and helped me upload them to the blog.

I really hope to feel better soon... this is rough.

Daryl & Kara's Whirlwind Visit

Sunday morning we all drove out to the Vancouver airport to pick up Daryl and Kara. Hannah and I made a sign together for the girls to hold at the airport. Hannah decorated it herself with heart stickers that she painstakingly placed one by one (upside down) on the sign. The plan was for the girls to wait at the baggage carousel holding the sign when Auntie Kara and Uncle Daryl arrived BUT their flight was 20 minutes EARLY so they were already at the baggage carousel when we got there. So the girls ended up holding the sign as they were coming up the escalator instead :)



We spent all day Sunday at Daryl's parents house for his Dad's 60th birthday party... it was a nice day, definitely not as hot as Saturday was! I forgot my camera out in the van and I didn't even take one picture while we were there...

Monday morning the girls and I got up and drove out to the Abbotsford airport to pick up Uncle Les and then drive him up to Chilliwack to stay with my Grandma and Grandpa. His flight was 10 minutes early so I was 0-2 in getting to the airport on time that weekend!

Monday evening Daryl and Kara came for a sleepover at our house since they stayed the previous night at Daryl's parents house and Hannah was less than impressed. She was pretty upset when we left Daryl's parents house the night before and Daryl and Kara weren't coming with us. She started crying "I don't want them to go back on the airplane!" So she was pretty happy that they came to stay overnight Monday and have pancakes with her in the morning. Tanya, Jeff and their kids also came over Monday evening and we all ordered pizza and the kids all played while the adults got to visit (again I forgot to get out the camera!). After Tanya and Jeff left Kara and I were brave enough to let Dave and Daryl go to the video store together to pick out a movie. Last time we sent the guys to the video store (several years ago) they rented 'The Ladies Man' and it sucked. This time they did better (but we did send the cell phone with them so they could call us for approval) and we rented 'Untraceable'. It was pretty good.

This morning I brought Daryl and Kara along with us to Tot Gym... Hannah and Victoria got to burn of some energy and Hannah enjoyed showing off for them. Afterwards I dropped them off with Daryl's Mom at the Skytrain station and they were heading downtown to meet up with his Dad and then off to the airport for their flight home tonight. Hannah thought she was going on the Skytrain with them so when they all got out of the van, said goodbye and then we left Hannah lost it. She cried and cried for about 15 minutes straight until she finally cried herself to sleep. Poor kid, she just doesn't understand why they are leaving again. Victoria slept through all of the turmoil thankfully so at least I didn't have 2 crying kids all the way home. And when Hannah woke up from her nap afterwards she asked Dave to take her to the Skytrain and she has been very emotional all evening.



What a busy weekend it was! Now tomorrow I have to do about 7 loads of laundry, grocery shop, run some errands and try and get things organized before I have my surgery Thursday morning and will be out of commission for a while. I am starting to get a little nervous now... other than a sedation when I had my wisdom teeth removed when I was a teenager I have never had any kind of surgery before! Gulp!

Hannah's Flower Girl Debut

I think things went fairly well... it was a long and HOT day but Hannah enjoyed her day as a Flower girl. She walked (well it was more like a speed walk) down the aisle without any problems :) I think she did well considering it was a room full of people that for the most part she didn't know... she got a little antsy during the ceremony but overall she did pretty good considering her age.

It was really hot today - 33 degrees! The heat certainly made the day seem even longer and with no air conditioning inside the reception hall everyone was sweating. Victoria was really hot... and with being held most of the time she was just roasting! Plus I think she is getting another tooth on top of the hot weather... but she was in pretty good spirits for most of the day despite it all.

My wrist is so swollen right now I can hardly type this... a combination of the actual injury, carrying the kids around too much all day and the heat is the cause I am sure. But it sure is painful right now! I am going to take some Tylenol 3 and head to bed... we have to pick Daryl and Kara up from the airport early in the morning :) Hannah is SO excited to see them... it has been almost a year since they moved to Prince George and she has missed them lots.

Here are a few pictures from the wedding today :)

Congratulations John and Dee !

Practice Makes Perfect!

Today I set Hannah's hair in rollers and we did a 'trial' run with her hair for Dee's wedding this weekend. It turned out well... finally something has worked! Hannah liked her hair too... she kept twirling around all evening saying 'Look at me! Look at me!'




Hannah went to the wedding rehearsal tonight and she had to practice holding hands with Kathryne and walking down the aisle. Both girls did well :) Hopefully they don't get stage fright on Saturday ;)

New Friends

This morning at Tot Gym I finally got to meet Christy's friend Rhonda and her two kids. It was nice to meet them after hearing so much about them from Christy... all good of course! Here are a couple pictures of Hannah and Victoria with their new friends Mareesa and Ronin :)




Also... the foot castings that I took the girls to have done in February were delivered today :) Desneige did such a wonderful job! I am really happy with the way the project turned out! Dave is working on replacing the floor in the entryway downstairs in our house and when it is all done he is going to hang the framed castings on the wall in the entryway. I took a picture of it just leaned up against the wall and I have stored it away until Dave is ready to hang it up downstairs. You can see some of Desneige's other work on her website (click here) she is very talented.



Victoria's feet are in the top shadow box and Hannah's are in the bottom one. The box in the middle has a black and white photo of the girls and the caption "Wherever your feet take you... I will be two steps behind you." The artwork is all black, white and metallic silver - it looks really great. You'll have to see it in person next time your at our place the picture doesn't do it justice :)

Power Wheels

Last night after we got home from dinner at Montana's (which was really good by the way) we let the girls play outside for a little before getting ready for bed. I love that we live in a cul-de-sac and the kids can play outside without having to worry about lots of traffic. Hannah loves to explore out there and she has quite the collection of rocks that she has acquired from several of our neighbours yards.

Victoria was riding the Power Wheels L'il Quad around the cul-de-sac... she has figured out how to push the button to make it go but she hasn't figured out that she has to let go of the button to stop. She crashed into neighbour's car... but at least it was just the tire and there was no damage :)



Hannah is still trying to get the concept of pedaling her new bike... she keeps pushing the pedals backwards (which is the brake). She is getting SO frustrated... she doesn't understand that it takes time to learn how to do it. Hopefully the weather will be nice this week and she can keep at it.

Happy Mother's Day!

We had my Mom and Dad over for dinner yesterday for Mother's Day because my Mom is working all day today. I made a roast beef dinner and a cherry pie for desert... it was yummy :) I gave my mom a clipboard calendar that I made myself at a craft class and Hannah and Victoria gave Buggy a cookbook. Happy Mother's Day Mom!

My parents took Hannah to Toys R Us yesterday before dinner and bought her a 'big girl' bike with training wheels. Let me back track a couple days here quickly... Almost every evening last week after dinner Hannah has been going outside to play with a couple of girls that live in the cul-de-sac. These girls are about 10 and 12 years old and Hannah really looks up to them. I kind of feel a bit bad for them because Hannah is a bit of a pest sometimes always following them around etc. But they are really nice to Hannah (so far) and they let her tag along... I am sure that by summer the novelty of playing with a soon to be 3 year old will wear off and they will probably ditch her leaving her broken hearted. I thought she would at least make it to high school before all the girl 'cliques' would start!

Anyways... the 'big girls' have been riding their bikes around the cul-de-sac and Hannah has decided that she does not want to ride her tricycle because it is for babies. She actually kicked her tricycle while informing me that it is for babies and she doesn't want to try and ride it. She was adamant that she wanted a 'big girl' bike like Bailey and MacKenzie have. I told her that she had to learn how to ride her tricycle before I would get her another bike.

Later that night Hannah asks me to phone Papa so she can talk to him. Papa wasn't home but Hannah left a message on the answering machine telling Papa that she wants him to buy her a bike. And today Papa and Buggy come over for dinner and low and behold they take her to Toys R Us and buy her a bike... imagine that (it's an early birthday present). The bike is cute though... it is lime green and pink with Dora on it and a 'Backpack' on the handle bars. But I can't wait until she is sixteen and wants a car... I am going to tell her to take that one up with Papa too ;)

Today we got up and Hannah and Victoria gave me a nice Mother's Day card (Hannah was a little confused and she said Happy Birthday to me). Hannah signed the card herself with an 'H' and a 'V' on Victoria's behalf.... cute :) Dave helped Hannah bake me some cupcakes which she was excited about... and I guess Victoria helped out too by having a nap and staying out of the way ;) We went to Mother's Day service at church this morning and all the Sunday school kids gave little bags of chocolates to all the Mom's and wished each Mom a Happy Mother's Day... it was very heart warming and it made me a little teary.

Tonight Dave and the girls are taking me to Montana's for dinner... I haven't been there before so it should be fun :) Right now both the girls are napping and Dave is working on the floor renovation so I am going to go and curl up with a book and relax for a bit. I love Mother's Day it is a guilt free day off!

Happy Mother's Day to my Mom and to all my Mom friends... I hope you all enjoy your special day!

Pimpin' Out the Mini Van

Dave took the van in on Saturday to have a DVD player installed for the kids... it just drops down from the ceiling. We figured that it would be a good investment since there are several long drives in our near future. We are heading up to Prince George this summer for a wedding and a visit with Daryl and Kara. Plus we are hoping to fit an Alberta road trip into our summer vacation as well so there will be lots of driving for us!

We drove out to Aldergrove to fill up the van with gas on Sunday night so we could test the new DVD player out. Hannah chose 'Cinderella' to watch for the ride... and what a quiet ride it was! Not a peep out of her the whole time... she loved watching the movie in the van! Even Victoria was trying to watch the screen but her car seat is still rear facing so she was trying to crane her neck around the side to have a look :) Good thing she will be old enough to turn her seat around and face forward before our trip or else she would have sore neck!

Of course now Hannah wants to watch movies in the van every time we go out... so I have made a rule that she can only watch a DVD if we are going somewhere at least 45minutes to an hour away. So far the rule is working... she hasn't been nagging me too much on short trips.



This week I have also been getting Victoria's birthday invitations ready... she is going to be ONE next month! I created the invitations myself using photoshop and I just had them developed today. I think they turned out pretty cute :)



I am going to get started on Hannah's next week... I want to get them ready before I have my surgery because I don't know what I will be able to do afterwards. Yikes! My surgery is 2 weeks tomorrow... I am starting to get a little nervous now. It doesn't help that my lovely friend Christy sends me e-mails with nasty surgery pictures... such as this!



I think I have alot of sleepless nights ahead just thinking about it!

Hannah's Dr. Appt.

This morning Hannah had a Dr. appointment to get her 'owie' looked at. Let me backtrack here for a minute...

Hannah has had a rash on top of her right hand and on her right cheek for a few months now. The rash is crusty and feels like your lips do when they are chapped. It is quite itchy and she scratches at it alot... often she scratches it until it bleeds and then gets all scabby.

I figured that it had something to do with Hannah's thumb sucking because her hand and cheek are always wet with saliva. I have been trying (unsuccessfully) to get Hannah to stop sucking her thumb for quite sometime now thinking that it would help get rid of this rash as well as stop her from getting 'hippo teeth'. Hannah is determined to keep sucking her thumb despite all the incentives (bribes) I have offered.

When I told her that I was going to have to take her to the Dr. because the rash on her hand is constantly bleeding and sore Hannah freaked out. I was surprised because she has been to the Dr. lots of times and she has never been afraid to go. So I asked her why she didn't want to go to the Dr. and she told me that the Dr. was going to cut her thumb off... she was hysterical over it. Now I know that Dave and I have never told her such a thing about the Dr. cutting her thumb off so I asked Hannah who told her that and she just keeps saying 'Somebody'. So she either can't remember who told her that or she is doing a good job at covering up for them. Or maybe she is making it up altogether and nobody told her that at all... though I think that is not really something that a 2 years would come up with on their own but who knows?

So today she cried in the car the whole way to the Dr's office... she was really very upset so I hope whoever told her this feels really badly about it! I told the receptionist on the phone when I made the appointment that Hannah was scared to see the Dr. about her 'owie' and she had said that they would give Hannah a 'special treat' for being a brave girl at her appointment. This seemed to help calm her down a bit. I snuck a package of Shrek cookies (Hannah's favourite) to the receptionist when Hannah wasn't looking and she gave them to the Dr. to give to Hannah after he looked at her rash.

Hannah was OK when he checked her out but she was definitely nervous. She kept pulling her hand up inside her shirt so he couldn't see it and he had to promise her that her wouldn't cut her thumb off before she would let him look at her hand. The Dr. determined that she has developed eczema on her hand and cheek from the skin constantly being moist with saliva from sucking her thumb. He prescribed a cream that we have to apply on it twice a day. Hopefully she doesn't lick it off!

Hannah was pretty happy to get the Shrek cookies from the Dr. and she gave him a 'high five' afterwards. But she still ran out of the room like a bullet while looking over her shoulder :)

So here is my request to all of you... if you see Hannah sucking her thumb you need to tell her she needs to stop doing it. Without telling her that the Dr. is going to cut her thumb off please :) Hopefully if every time she does it people are getting after her she will knock it off... if not her eczema is going to keep coming back!