Month: August 2019

Let’s see…what happened in Sierra’s 39th month on this Earth?

Oh yes, she became a sister.

 

That’s right, look out Ezra, you have a sister who is going to make sure you know how to watch Dora!

Of course everyone wonders how a big sister or brother will react when a baby arrives at the house.  We have to say that Sierra has been beyond extraordinary.  She’s always looking to help out and she also knows how to keep her distance if Ezra is sleeping or if he is feeding.  She is also getting the hang of washing her hands before touching him.  I thought she would be disappointed that she couldn’t play much with him at this point but she doesn’t seem to mind….yet?

It’s the last month of the summer and Sierra has had a lot of fun with her swing set or playing with water guns or hopping on her collection of bicycles/tricycles.

I have been teaching her to speak English which I would say is a hard battle.  There are a lot of times where I say “How do you say that in English?” and she says “Je ne veux pas.”

The interesting part of this website will now be how to focus on Sierra posts vs. Ezra posts.  There were a few photos I wanted to post with Sierra and Ezra the other day and I thought “No no, I’ll save that for the Sierra post.”  Something tells me I’ll be moving towards a simpler monthly update for the entire family format.

Another hot day in July, another trip to someone who owns a swimming pool!  We went to see Ben and Marie-Eve near Hawkesbury and took a dip in their pool.  Here’s Sierra and their son having fun on the trampoline.  I had a good laugh when Ben said “I have all these toys for my son and he only seems to use them when people come over!”

Yep, on the hottest day in July Sierra decides to wear the Santa hat!

This was my office for a week!  With the baby approaching fast and no one at the house I asked to work from home until Danielle showed up to help us out.  This was a typical morning for me and then I would transition into the house when it got too hot.  It was quite the decent setup.  It’s very quiet in the mornings with me listening to either CBC Music, Pearl Jam bootlegs or some new music.  I could fall in love with this lifestyle fast!

Check out the almost finished product in Hull!

Wow, it’s very weird to see this photo almost a month later after Vero has given birth!

Sierra doing some painting at the daycare.

Our daughter the daredevil.

Here’s Sierra imitating her Dad on the bars.

Here’s Sierra helping Maman put the finishing touches on my birthday cake which was fantastic!

Sierra with her old man.

Anne-Marie’s family were nice enough to drop by for my birthday.

Sierra teaching Grand-Maman how to read.

For my birthday Vero smartly suggested an activity fairly close to home/hospital in case the baby decided to arrive.  We decided to head out mini-putting with these jokers!

Melanie smartly packed some snacks which these two devoured every third hole.  Mini-putting with kids is an interesting exercise.  They did have fun though but they definitely didn’t feel like waiting for everyone else to finish their turn!  Luckily they could move ahead and keep swinging the club.

They were not happy I won the game.

One last snack before heading for lunch.

We went to…the Cornerstone Bar and Grill?   I can’t remember if that’s the name.  It was quite good and here’s a photo of when I took the kids on a tour of the restaurant.  I was trying to teach them how to do kegstands.

Sierra hanging out on the back deck.

I got this really great carrying case and strap for my dulcimer that I received at Christmas.  Now I can travel around like a true troubadour!

Wrestling in Sierra’s room.

Bonding 2019 style.

Hanging out at the Limoges park splash pad.

I always giggle when I pull this out of the fridge.

Troy and Connie were nice enough to send me some beer from Cowbell Brewery!  Thanks guys!

This was a big moment for me.  Sierra wanting to really get into playing video games!  I was teaching her how to move right AND jump at the same time.  It took her a few days but she figured it out and when she did…what an accomplishment!  She levelled up!

I thought this t-shirt perfectly encapsulates what every fan of music needs to know.  

 

The team was nice enough to surprise me with a birthday/baby shower.  There was even a bottle of rye in the care package!

The morning of Ezra’s birth (one day after his due date), we decided to hit up the Navan Fair parade.  We just assumed we wouldn’t be able to go because of Ezra but because he decided to hang out inside Maman for an extra day, we gained some extra time!

This parade was quite awesome and lasted a long time.  It was definitely larger than the Russell Canada Day Parade we went to earlier in the summer.

Maybe I should join one of these bands?

So many tractors!

I can envision Nanny Ruth riding one of these through town!

Near the end of the parade was a band on a float playing Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes.  We got Sierra to wave the devil horn hand signal to them and someone gave her a kazoo!  She loves that thing. 

I had a good chuckle when I saw the sign about gang colours.  If I’m part of the Pearl Jam gang, does that mean no black t-shirts?

Here’s where I am probably going to start overlapping photos from other posts of Sierra and Ezra together.  Check out the amount of toys she is sharing with Ezra!

Sierra trying out her new wheels!  She’s surprisingly good at going on the bicycle.

Move over Cheerios and oatmeal…there’s a new breakfast favourite in town called peanut butter and jam on toast!  Although lately she has moved onto just having jam.

Sierra is learning to take pictures with different options.

I’m sure they will be reproducing this picture in thirty years!

Sierra wasn’t too impressed that I went to get the mail before bringing her home from daycare!  She kept telling me everything was crushing her!  During the time I have had off to help with Ezra I have taken Sierra in the bike trailer each morning to daycare.  It’s a fun routine and she loves waving to her friends when she arrives and leaves every day.  I’ve even taken her friend home with her one day which was hilarious as they were giggling the entire trip home. 

One morning Sierra saw some dark clouds and said “Rain?” and I thought “Nah.”  Sure enough, just as we were going to head out on the bike a torrential downpour hit us!  Luckily we were still in the driveway so we both raced for the car.  We were lucky we weren’t caught in that out in the middle of the trip!

We put some grass seed down around the new patio step so Sierra really loves hosing it down (and some sometimes herself!)

The daycare had an entire week of fun activities planned…hat day, pyjama day, picnic day.  It culminated with a water day!

Sierra having some good supper with friends.

I remember a year ago being on this swing set needing to hold Sierra in her seat.  Look at her go now!

Sierra was a trooper biking over a couple of blocks in Vars!  We are teaching her the rules of the road.

Out of all the toys in the store she decides to go play with the Infinity Gauntlet?!  Definitely her father’s daughter.

Someone pointed out that Sierra must be lifting her leg to make room for that second hot dog she asked for!

Alan and Joelle were nice enough to ask us over for a BBQ to finish off the summer.  Here is Sierra playing some game with the other kids.

I guess Sierra thought this would make the best family photo?

Look how far away this daredevil is!  We decided to go on the bike path in Embrun for a stroll.  Sierra had a hard time understanding why she needs to stay between the yellow and white lines.  There were a couple of close calls when she would stray across the line and there were other cyclists coming.  Hopefully they scared her enough to remember to stay in her lane!

She definitely was having the time of her life for the first half of the trip.  I think we brought her too far one way as I had to push the bike all the way back on the return trek.  It was a good trip though.  We stopped for a smoothie and a great BLT wrap on the way back.

Sierra couldn’t understand why she needed to use a fork with her hot chicken sandwich.  As Tante Anne-Marie said “Well in her defense, it IS a sandwich!”

A selfie courtesy of Sierra.

Clearly the doctor has a big effect on Sierra as she chose the stethoscope from the toy bin.  Dr. Sierra! 

The Pope clan dropped by for a few days at the end of August.  Abbey and Sierra wanted to pick up some leaves so we brought them to the neighbours who has this one maple tree that loses its leaves a month before all others.

Bull in a china shop?  No…two girls in a hot sauce store!  We got to sample some great sauces at Chile Chiles but it was pretty hard to keep the two girls on their best behaviour in a store with a lot of glass bottles!

Lovers of hot sauce unite!

I had never seen these things before but John tipped me off that there were these animal vehicles that the girls could cruise around the mall on.  They had a good time roaming around the mall with this for 30 minutes.

My favourite part about this photo is how Maureen is letting Abbey walk behind them!

These two cousins were doing their Geordi LaForge impression.

 

 

 

If the first week with Ezra was trying to find our balance again, then the second week was getting up and being able to skate around the rink a little.  Day by day it was getting easier as we figured out a good rhythm.  Vero realized that the easiest way to deal with the kid at night was to feed in the bed and let him go to sleep there as well.  Still, the kid is still like a vampire who sleeps a lot during the days and then just feeds at night.  Some days it’s frustrating and then others we realize the kid only two weeks old!

He seems to be a fussy baby when he isn’t eating.  It’s quite hard to find something that calms him down from grunting.  He’s not full out crying but he’s definitely grunting a lot and when the evening hits he does seems to start crying a lot more.  Things that calm him down : the pinky finger in the mouth, doing squats and…that’s about it.  We haven’t stumbled upon the magical formula yet although one night I put on Yellow Submarine by the Beatles and the kid fell asleep right away!  I was quite proud of that until the album ended and he woke up again.

Other than that, he’s quite the normal baby who sleeps, poops and feeds.  Nothing much else to report there!

The first bath!  After this bath we noticed his skin was super dry for the next few days.  Maybe we will bathe him in some moisturizer the next time around?

Chillin’ out in the play area.

Sierra is starting to take photos.  Other than not being in focus, it’s not a bad shot!

One of our first visitors!  Gen came over with some great muffins that were dairy free for Vero.  I thought they were quite tasty. Gen wasn’t convinced.

Seeing that Vero doesn’t get long stretches of sleep during the night, our morning routine generally consists of one last feeding before I take Ezra out to do something in town to give Vero some time.  Considering I only have a window of 1-2 hours before he wants to feed we go down the basement and wait it until until feeding time.  Here we are watching Star Trek together!  I think he’s really enjoying it as you can tell.  Sidenote: I’m finally watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and as of Season 4, it’s starting to pick up.

Here we are out at Michael’s one morning.  He sleeps through anything…including a shopping cart bouncing around the parking lot!

When someone asks how big Ezra is, I say “About double the spaghetti.”

The Hart family was nice enough to bring some much appreciated supplies for us!  Ben made an excellent whole chicken and potato meal that has lasted us for a few days now.  Plus there are still some burritos to dig into!   Thank you so much!

Yellow Submarine…lulling babies to sleep for the past fifty years.

We had to bring Ezra to a hearing test at the Metcalfe Community Centre.  We had never been there before.  We found it hilarious that the waiting area was some old cubicle (or perhaps it wasn’t an old cubicle…maybe it’s actually Bobs’ cubicle and he leaves for a few minutes to allow us to sit in his waiting area of a cubicle?).  Such is the life of small town community centres I suppose.  Anyhow, we were worried that we would have to come back again another day as Ezra was awake for the hearing test and they recommend they are asleep.  But one pinky finger to suck on had him quiet enough to pass the hearing test!  Hurrah!

Trying to get Ezra to calm down.

Whenever we can, we try some skin to skin contact with Ezra as the research says it’s quite good for him. Plus, who doesn’t want to have a baby on them?  We tried out Nanny Sybil’s new blanket that she had sent up.  Thank you so much Nanny!

Ezra hiding out with the blanket.

Nothing like a good campfire to knock you out.

I was not too impressed when Vero wanted to dress him up in this thing when we went out to Angel and Michel’s BBQ but she insisted he needed to be warm.  I feel he looks like Ralphie in his bunny outfit from A Christmas Story!

It’s been an interesting and trying week with Ezra.  The first couple of days with him were really really good.  The kid slept a lot and we felt a energized.  One morning I even went to Costco with Danielle (who is a life saver being here to help us out) and had a great day!

Then the vampire son came out.  Ezra did NOT want to sleep during the night.  He would feed and then stay awake for a few hours making grunting noises/crying a little.  Ugh.

Let’s back up a little.  The hospital offered a program which allowed us to leave the hospital earlier than usual (we left Sunday afternoon, not 24 hours after the birth!) as long as a midwife can come and visit a few times in the week to do some tests.  At first we initially declined this option but after a really hard first night where I squirrelled Ezra and myself up in the bathroom so Vero could get some sleep away from the grunting and cries…we realized that it may be better to head home so at least I could go into another room with him and get him away from Vero if need be.

This turned out to be the best decision of our lives.  The midwife was incredible.  She came in on Monday and Wednesday and also followed up with an additional Friday just to make sure we were doing fine.  The Monday appointment was pretty good…we all had some energy in us, we asked some questions and she took some measurements and some blood samples from Ezra.

Once Tuesday night hit and the vampire awoke, the midwife saw that we were a couple of adults who were destroyed by lack of sleep.  I couldn’t even comprehend how I could function.  But she put things into perspective and talked us through the issues we were having so far with him (not many at this point other than not sleeping through the night) and we got some much needed sleep that day.

While it would be nice to get a straight shot of 6-8 hours of sleep, the human body can still function quite nicely if it only gets 6-8 hours over the span of 24 hours.  The week got easier but Ezra has kept on staying awake during the night.

As I write this one week after his birth, Danielle and Gaetan have taken Sierra for breakfast and Vero and Ezra are sleeping in the bedroom.  He doesn’t seem to like sleeping in his bassinet in the bedroom so we have figured out that if I sleep on the couch, Vero has enough room to feed him in the bed and create a Fort Knox type barricade around him in the bed so he’s safe and sound when he sleeps.  I’m pretty impressed by the setup.  Last night in particular Vero couldn’t get him back to sleep after 2am and I sat for 3 hours with him watching Star Trek Deep Space Nine in the living room.  It’s nice to be sitting with your baby at first and just taking it in and trying different tricks to put him to sleep.  But after two hours it gets a little tiresome!!

At this point, the only tricks that seem to work is to put a pinky finger in his mouth to suck on and also to come along for the ride of doing squats with me.  He likes dropping down and coming back up.  It calms him.  While I don’t particularly care for the newborn phase of a child’s life (who really loves the lack of sleep and not knowing why a kid is crying?!) I do enjoy stumbling upon some new trick that calms him down.

All is not lost however…he is a great little boy and we don’t see many issues at this point like we did with Sierra.  Sierra had an intolerance to milk protein and soy that we didn’t really diagnose until four months later.  How were we supposed to know that her poops weren’t looking normal and crying her lungs out all evening wasn’t normal?

Ezra seems to be having the right type of stool coming out of him and nothing makes me happier.  We can’t remember if Sierra also was good at the beginning so we will keep an eye on things once a month goes by.

It’s hard not to talk about Sierra when I talk about Ezra because I am always comparing the experiences in my head.

Speaking of Sierra, she is turning out to be a great big sister.  She wants to play with him and hold him and generally be around him but she listens well if we tell her that certain times aren’t the best for playing (like when he’s sleeping).  I think a good relationship will bond the older he gets.

Onto to some pictures!

Here’s a snap of Ezra and I after a night of no sleep.  But he’s already a diehard Smashing Pumpkins fan.  He gave me the thumbs up for my choice of t-shirt.

Here he is before leaving the hospital for the first time.  I’m thinking he’s giving me some type of gang sign?

Proud Papa!

Obligatory “Here Comes the Son!”.  What a great first song to listen to.

”What do you mean he’s a boy?!”

Sierra was very excited to show Ezra all her toys.

We snuck outside onto the front porch to get some sunlight.

“Excellent.”  I think this is the picture in which Nanny was saying she had never seen fingers so long on a newborn before.

Clearly Ezra thinks my jokes are pretty good.

I saw this on a box at Costco and thought it was hilarious.

Grand-maman said that the ladies love seeing a guy push a stroller.

Grand-maman sneaking in a much needed nap.

Sierra playing Frère Jacques on the kazoo for Ezra.  

I’m crushing your head!

I send these shirtless photos to my colleagues every few days.  I know they are happy to receive them.

Hanging out in the living room 

Grand-papa dropped in for a visit

I got some lessons from the bricklayer.  Pouring cement wasn’t all that hard.  I was expecting it to be harder.  I suppose the hardest part is creating the form to put the cement in and I let Gaetan do that part while I slept.  

The final product!  I raced to the daycare to pick up Sierra because we had the great idea of putting Sierra and Ezra’s foot print into the cement before it dried.  We got Ezra’s done and then Sierra didn’t want anything to do with it!  After minutes of trying to convince her it was a cool thing to do, we wiped the slate clean.

First outing with Ezra..it wasn’t a far walk…a couple of houses away!

We survived the first outing together!

A nice family shot

 

 

Sierra was born on a Saturday evening three years ago.  Ezra came into this world in a very similar fashion.  Vero and I had a nap during the day and ate some supper.

“Yahoo I made it!”

I was in the other room when I heard the news that Vero’s water had broken!  We had never witnessed this the first time around so it was new to us.

This was around 6:20pm and we didn’t take much time to get to the hospital.  Let’s just say that the construction zones set at 80km/hr had a vehicle zoom through them this time around!  I figured I had a good excuse and there were no workers present.

The entire event was eerily similar to the first time we came…the hospital was empty on a Saturday evening as we walked up the hallways.  We tried to get into an elevator and the thing wasn’t even working on a Saturday evening so we had to find another one!

We got to the birthing centre and they told us we were ready to go and we should get to work!  They wheeled us into Room 2B219 which was the exact same room we had three years prior.  There are 20 rooms available so I guess fate wanted us to have some similar surroundings?

Ezra is loving life in the arms of a shirtless man.

The people helping us this time around were ten times better than the first time around.  The first time they though Vero had already delivered a baby before so they didn’t really coach her through the process.  This time around everyone was involved in counting down contractions, telling when to push, etc etc etc.  We really appreciated the staff and their hard work but let’s be honest here, Vero was doing all the hard work!

I tried to convince Vero that a baby with this type of moustache NEEDS to be named Mario!  But she didn’t bite.

Out came the baby at 7:37pm and Vero and I were both shocked to see that it was a boy!  Side note: Considering the size of a newborn’s testicles, I am now laughing at the fact that I wasn’t entirely sure if Sierra was a girl or not.  I said to the nurses “It’s a….girl?” And they looked at me like I was crazy and said “Uh yeah, it’s a girl.” Now I know why they thought I was kind of dumb.  There is no room for error when you see a newborns’ testicles and so there we had him…a baby boy!  All signs had pointed to having a girl so it definitely caught us by a good surprise!

Ezra came in at 7 lbs, 13 ounces and measured 21 inches.  Nanny saw a photo of him and remarked at how long his fingers were and thought he may be a fighter. Either that or a piano player!

We phoned a few key members of the family to let them hear the good news and settled in for the night.  It’s interesting how three years can go by and I forget how hard it is to take care of a newborn on the first night.  Ezra decided to keep us up all night long testing out his new set of lungs!  But we love him and that’s what counts.

Ezra Bridger of Star Wars Rebels was the partial inspiration for his name.  It’s just a cool sounding name!