i keep meaning to stop in here, but I usually think about it as I'm falling asleep, running through in my head all the things I would have liked to do but didn't.
These pics are from my parents, taken when Tom was one day old - just after he was sent home. He looks about the same now. Just a little bigger. How much bigger, we're not sure. It took him a full two weeks to regain his birth weight, which is a little odd for my kids. But he seems much bigger now. Just waiting for him to be assigned a health number so I can take him to the doc. Because he's a BC resident, and we're so fresh from Alberta, we're still considered Albertans, he has no health coverage anywhere in Canada right now. In fact, I have a big fat bill for his birth, because the hospital didn't know how to bill it. Apparently, it costs about $1500 to have a baby and spend one night in a hospital in Canada. We don't have to pay it - we just need to get it sorted out as things make their way through the governments.
Tom's a great baby. He's been sleeping from midnight to 5 a.m. from about three days old. You can set a watch to him most nights. I've been pretty spoiled, really. But I know enough about newborns to know it won't last. I was actually a little worried about him going such a long stretch every night so early on, so I mentioned it to his doc. He told me it's Mother Nature's way of procreating the species - Moms would go mad if every baby had the sleeping patterns of the first, compounded with taking care of older kids, so generally, the more kids you have, the better sleepers they are. It was the final installment of our doc's crusade to get us to have more kids. He came by to check on us the morning after, and he was marvelling about how easy our labour was. I agreed - the easiest one yet. "Good!" he said. "Maybe it'll convince you to have a few more!" When I looked a little horrified, he went into a huge speech about how great big families are, because it forces the kids to take care of each other, because mom and dad are too busy to settle their disputes. Sounds like Lord of the Flies to me, but he insists it works out. I think he's just paid a unit rate per birth, and likely gives the same speech to everyone of childbearing years. The fact is, five is our limit, because we don't want to buy a church van to haul our kids around.
We're starting to enjoy BC, and Mike is getting right into the whole hippie thing. We had the VW van already, but we recently bought a little grain mill and several sacks of various localy grown organic grains from a little granery north of town. We use it to make all of our own breads and muffins. Buckwheat pancakes are really good, we've discovered. Especially with real, organic maple syrup. No offence, Aunt Jemima. We've started making our own lemonade from lemons, pasta sauce from tomatoes, and we've decided to go one step beyond the all natural organic yogurt the kids already eat, and make our own, flavoured with local organic fruit. We're just deciding on the best maker to get. We've decided we should probably start making our own ice cream too. If we start making our own cheese, you'll know we've completely lost it, but so far it's been pretty fun, the food tastes a lot better, isn't any more expensive, and it's nice knowing exactly what we're eating. It's resurrected the whole "we should get a farm!" discussion, so we can get our own eggs and milk, too. Mike's been ogling this 600 acre (NOT a typo - six HUNDRED acres) farm on Keller Rd outside of Dryden, but I think it'll probably be gone by the time we're ready to go anywhere near Ontario again. Getting a little farm and filling it with a zillion kids has been a recurring discussion since before we were even married - I think we were both in high school the first time it came up - so I'm sure we'll do it someday. We have the kids already - just need a few cows and chickens and enough space for them all and we're there!
The other kids are doing well. I was expecting a bit of regression after Tom, but didn't get too much. Dave had the roughest time. He didn't seem too sure of how he stood with me anymore. He became pretty clingy for a bit. But I made sure he got lots of cuddles whenever Tom was sleeping, and he seems alright now. John and Joan generally fight over him, each trying to out tickle and out cuddle the other, to get the most face time with the baby. John's teacher said he was REALLY excited after Tom was born, and announced to the class that "Tom was full of cuteness."
There have been some not-so-happy moments since Tom came along as well, though none related to Tom. We've been getting the kids caught up on their immunizations, which is never good times. My parents were here while Dave had his appt, so he wasn't too bad. But the day John and Joan had theirs was an epic day, indeed. It was my very first outing with all four by myself, making it a bit traumatic for me to begin with. John, being almost 6, could be reasoned with about getting shots. he was fascinated by the science of the vaccines, and was actually looking forward to it. But then, the needles themselves came out. The nurse kept telling him not to look at it, so of course he couldn't take his eyes off the thing. He watch as it jabbed him, and of course, he was bawling. "It...*gasp*... doesn't ...*sniff*...feel ...*snort*...gooooood!" he wailed.
Joan is of course watching all of this, and probably thought she was off the hook - at least until the nurse plopped her on my lap, and started pulling out more needles. "NOT ME!!!! NO MOMMY!!! NOT MEEEEEE!!!!!!" she screamed. It was gut wrenching. What made it worse was the fact that she had fallen behind. One of the little known risks of shots are strokes, apparently, and when I saw that after her diagnosis, I panicked. I couldn't afford to have her suffering multiple strokes in her life, so she had gone largely unvaccinated. I know, I know. I'm usually a huge pro-vaccine person, but when it's your own kid, thoughts become kinda clouded. Anyway, her pediatrician gave me a huge package of information, which basically said that she's far more likely to get brain damage from the diseases the vaccine prevents, than from the vaccine. And her CP puts her at a higher risk of complications than other kids, so if anyone should be vaccinated, it's her. Then, when I found out that there had been a huge measles outbreak through BC from the Olympics, that was the final straw, and I made her an appointment. I thought it was dumb to live in fear of measles. The nurses were great - they weren't judgemental. Instead they thanked me for bringing her in and assured me it was the right move, because of her risk factors and so many diseases resurfacing because unvaccinated kids are becoming so common.
But sadly for Joan, it meant she needed six shots. So how exactly do you give six shots to a scared and squirmy 3-year-old? Well, now I know. They pulled in a second nurse to help, which is never a good sign. They plopped her, screaming, onto my lap. My job was to pin her arms hard against her sides, so she couldn't move. Then each nurse took three needles, and on the count of three, they both started a-jabbin! But it didn't end there. She was so full of holes, they couldn't get the band aids on fast enough, so she had a secondary freak-out as she saw blood dripping down both arms. If anything could cause a life-long irrational fear of needles, that was definitely it. She still talks about it. We went to see the doc for Tom, and as she clutched her shoulders, she shook her head and chanted "NO MORE OWIE! NO MORE OWIE!" Can't wait to take her in for the boosters in a couple weeks!
Well, the house is erupting into chaos, so I'd better go. But I'll leave you with a little gem from John. I don't know where this is coming from, but he likes to make up "food chains" in his head. This was his latest, after seeing a mosquito:
"Mosquitoes eat us. Then dragonflies eat the mosquitoes. Then fish eat the dragonflies. Then we eat the fish. That means...WE'RE EATING OURSELVES!!!"
