Family Life – Page 19 – a hippie with a minivan

7 Months…

My sweet Wilhelmina is 7 months old today…

I can’t believe time has gone by so fast… She is growing so quickly, changing so much and even got her first tooth today! (top tooth at that)

She truly makes us smile. She wakes up in the morning with the biggest grin, she cuddles and kisses and loves being in anyones arms… She loves to hang out with her brothers and wherever they go she wants to follow… Though I do know that Khéna misses being the baby at times and has given her the permission to go back into my tummy more than once, he is such a great big brother along with Xavier and Colin and she loves them all…

Talking about Colin, it is amazing how much she and Colin look alike. She is seriously his double… everyone notices it and there are some pictures that we have of Colin that we can almost not tell the difference if it weren’t for the picture quality….

Xavier and her seem to share something very special. He wears her and carries her and has gotten her dressed and just loves to help take care of her. Not having a sibling of my own, I am amazed at the closeness all the kids have and their genuine love for each other. I think she is so lucky to have three big brothers to watch out for her, help care for her and who make her smile and laugh…

So, yes her first tooth has pierced and though she is not eating yet, she loves when I give her a carrot or piece of apple or cucumber to suck on… she has also loved licking the straw of my smoothie (made from frozen fruits and coconut milk) and loves to try to get water from my straw… I love this phase of experimenting, tasting. but not yet actually eating and swallowing anything…

I am going to write a more extensive post about EC but to mention is quickly, it is going great. We catch most pees and virtually all poos. With her crawling and interested in everything there have been a few more misses and puddles, but having her diaper-free all the time makes things easy. She still has the routine of having a pee before bed and waking up dry in the morning… We are so confident in her staying dry that she sleeps bare bum and we are not nervous at all….

Wilhelmina is just a happy little girl… when we are at home she can spend hours playing and discovering. She also loves to be worn around the house and loves to go outside… She doesn’t mind when we are out for the day and will quietly stay in the sling and nurse and sleep and people watch and just be with me while I get things done. The only thing that she doesn’t enjoy after a long day is the drive home. She nurses less when we are out so often the drive home reminds her that she is hungry… I stop and nurse her and then we are on our way again..

So wow… 7 months old… what an amazing kid and I am not ashamed to say that I am enjoying having a daughter.

Last day…

Well, it is here. Simon’s last official day of parental leave.

After nearly 7 months of being home and being a full-time family, Simon will be going to work tomorrow morning. I remember when Wilhelmina was born and would try imagine what she would be like when he would go back to work. Would she be stitting? Crawling? Cruising? how big would she be? what would she look like?

Now the day is here and she is more amazing than I could have imagined.

It has been amazing have Simon around the house. He does so much to help with the kids and let me devote time to Wilhelmina and even myself… Wilhelmina is such a Daddy’s girl and loves to be on his back while he is doing things around the house. The minutes she sees the Ergo, she craws to him or calms down if she is upset and it is her favourite place to fall asleep…

As much as I wish Simon could always be home, I am also looking forward to getting back into a daily routine. Giving birth and then having him home has made me feel lazy which is something that I can no longer do when I am back to being to primary caregiver to all four kids. I don’t mind being lazy sometimes, but after a while, it becomes a routine that is hard to get out of and I start feeling crappy and impatient with myself which then reflects on the kids. It is not the person I strive to be, and hopefully, doing more will mean that I will drop off a bit more weight which will also help with my energy and some negative feelings I have been having about myself.

I am not expecting to be 100% back to what I was doing before right away, but being home alone will do some good and going back into the role of primary caregiver will also feel quite nice.

I went and did the grocery shopping yesterday and made sure I had food for the week and a good list of meals that I can make without too much preparation to ease into this first week… soon I plan on getting back into the normal routine of baking bread on a regular basis, doing more baking in general and getting back into a better house keeping routine…

So this long long weekend has come to an end… the house will feel quite empty tomorrow morning when we wake up without Simon in the house…

I feel so thankful that we were able to have such a long time as a full-time family…

ears… ears…

We have been battling ear problems these last few days.

For the first (and maybe second time), one of my kids has an ear infection. Xavier came down with a fever and an earache early last week and is just now coming out of it.

8 years and 4 kids, and this is the first time that we have ever had to deal with this. Luckily, though not for him, it is Xavier and he is able to share what he is going though, understand what to do and not to do and he has been getting through it.. I can’t imagine having a small baby with an ear infection… it has been awful for him especially when his ear was as its worst and he was waking from pain.

When we just thought that we were done, Khéna had a very wakefull night with a sore ear… though the pain was gone in the morning, he has been with fever for two days now. I am not too sure what exactly is happening with him, but hopefully the pain won’t come back again and the fever will just subside.

On the subject of ears and Khéna, we have been wondering for the last little while if Khéna has trouble hearing. He doesn’t seem to hear us often when we talk and makes us repeat often. He doesn’t hear when we call him from another room, or talk from behind him. He has been asking us to look at him when we talk so that either the sound is coming from in front or he can see our lips when we talk and will often say that he didn’t hear something.

This is pretty new and it seems to have been escalating quickly in these last few weeks so a few days ago I called a specialist and have an appointment set up for in a few weeks.

I am looking forward to understanding more what is happening with him and am hopeful that it is something temporary.

I would love to hear stores from others who have seen this before or have any insight…

Newness…

Colin decided that he would try riding his bike without training wheels… though he is still nervous and tends to lean a bit too much he did it! I can’t believe that me little Colin is getting so big… he was just a baby when I started this blog and now he can do triple flips underwater and ride his bike…

And of course, if I am talking about getting big… Wilhelmina is surprising us every day.. she has started cruising so we got the Radio-Flyer walker out and she loves it! I can’t believe she can do this already…

Baby Robin…

Something got my attention in the pool when I was in the kitchen. I saw something floating, then it thrashed and I realized it was a bird…

I called out to Simon that there was something in the pool and that it was drowning and to go help it quickly.

He came back with this little one…all wet and shivering and breathing fast.

It was most likely his first flight and ended up in the pool, he would not have lasted another minute…

I got a box and put a towel in it to give it a chance to warm up…

About 10 minutes later, his eyes started opening…

I didn’t know that it was a baby Robin, but my neighbor came by and told me what he was…. then whenever we got close he started to open his beak and show us that he was hungry. My mama heart broke.

My cat eats birds often, they live and die, but this little one was pulling at my heartstrings…

Then I saw her… On the fence, with a full beak, a mama robin, looking for her baby.

I took a chance and brought the box with the baby near where the mama was… She saw him right away, in the box in my hands, and her gaze followed us as I placed the box on the side of the pool… she went from place to place making sure the path was clear and then went to him…

As I was contemplating what to do next as he was very exposed to the sun and the cats on the side of the pool, the mama left the box for a few minutes…

I turned to get another picture of her…