What a Difference a Year Makes

Look at the difference one year can make in the life of a small boy!

2 Years Old!

It hardly seems possible but today is Wesley's second birthday. When I was pregnant and stuck in the hospital for six long weeks it seemed like he'd never get here. Now it's hard to remember a time without him!

So here's my little Wesley tribute for his second birthday...

Wesley is a fun child to be around. That hasn't always been true of him this year but it's really true right now. He really dealt with some serious separation anxiety and wouldn't let me out of his sight for a long time. Fortunately those days seem to be over and he's generally a happy little guy now. He's got quite a sense of humour and he loves to laugh. And when he's laughing, everyone around him is laughing too. He's got this crazy, infectious laugh that I could listen to all day long.

Wesley loves his stuffed dog, pictures of dogs and books about dogs, pretty much anything to do with dogs. Unless of course he's around an actual dog. Then he freaks out. Any sort of pretend dog is A-OK though.

He also loves trucks, tractors and cars. His favourite activity right now is "driving" the car. If we would let him, he'd sit in our car by the hour pretending to drive. I think all Nick did after supper last night was sit in the passenger seat of our van while Wesley "drove". They had a blast.

Wesley loves his sister. He wants to be wherever she is, doing whatever she doing, even if she's playing dress up. I got a great picture of him in one of her dress up gowns the other day. Hilarious. Whether Darcy is doing something good or bad, Wesley wants to be right there with her.

Wesley is small for his age. At 2 years old he weighs 21 pounds, less than most one-year olds. He eats well (we've recently discovered a passion for chicken drumsticks) but he doesn't put on any weight. He doesn't like milk (which could be part of the problem) but would drink apple juice from morning to night if he could.

His speech is also a bit behind schedule for a two-year old. He doesn't have as many words as he should and he's not yet putting any sort of sentences together. We know that his hearing problems earlier in the year contributed to this. He is making improvements but we know he's not yet where he should be. So we continue to work with him on this and in the meantime he is a championship signer. He uses sign language for a lot of stuff so we have no trouble communicating with him but people outside our immediate family might have some trouble. One of his favourite new words is "movie" (he says, "oovie") which he picked up after our recent vacation and his exposure to the DVD player on the long drives. He also likes to do a high-pitched shriek when things aren't going quite the way he'd like them. Not cool.

It has been an eventful two years and we've loved almost every minute of it. He is just the cutest little guy and we love having him as part of our family. Happy birthday Wes-man! We love you.

Frustrating

It was approximately a million degrees here yesterday. Nick was working from 10:45 - 10:00 which makes for a long day for the kids and I. With church starting at 10:30 we all got ready to leave at the same time.

We haven't been at church for a few weeks because of our vacation and Darcy was really looking forward to getting there to see her friends. I also had some friends with family visiting from out of town that I wanted to see too. So we actually got in the car a few minutes early and headed out the door. We had been driving for all of 2 minutes when I heard a funny sound and felt a pulling to the right of the car. We were near the home of some friends from church so I made it to their driveway and pulled in. Sure enough, we had a flat tire. Our friends weren't home so I pulled out my trusty CAA card. We were told it would be a 45 minute wait at about 10:15. Although it was early, it was already heating up. I left the car running so we could keep the air conditioning on. It didn't make much difference though and we were all sweating. The kids had drinks with them, but I didn't.

I had to determine if we had a spare tire, because if we didn't CAA would have had to send a different truck. I looked in the trunk but because we have a mini van with fold-down seats the spare tire wasn't there. I called Nick at work but he hadn't arrived yet so I dug out the manual and figured out that the spare is in between the front and back seats. So it's about 30 degrees out, I'm dressed for church and I'm digging around in the car trying to get out the spare tire. Fortunately it didn't look like it had ever been used so my white skirt was safe.

Finally the driver came, only a few minutes past the 45 prediction and it took him very little time to get the tire changed. By this time it's 11:15 and church is nearly done. I suggested to Darcy that maybe we should just go back home and she looked at me like I was crazy and said, "Then why am I wearing a dress???" So we went and just went straight into the nursery so she could play with her friends. Church ended pretty much as soon as we got there, so we made it in time for juice. Woo hoo!

We're back!

It has been an incredibly busy and fun two weeks away for us, but we're finally back at home.

We started off in Cambridge two weeks ago for my Dad's retirement celebration. He has worked for Allen-Bradley/Rockwell for over 44 years and has decided to retire. They really threw him a great celebration party. We went first to the plant where they made some presentations to him and we got a tour of the plant. Then we were all taken out for a delicious steak lunch. It was a great day. We had decided that since we'd all be together and dressed nicely that we'd do formal family portraits on the same day. The kids were pretty tired by this time but the pictures went well and turned out nicely. I'll post them once I get them scanned.

The next morning we were up and on our way to Montreal as we needed to be at L'Achigan camp by that evening. We had one of the smoothest drives we've ever had to Montreal and spent a couple of hours with Grandmaman and Papa before heading up to camp. We also had a delicious meal there, which turned out the be good because the camp food was terrible this year!

We had a great week at camp once again. We're so glad we decided to go. The kids loved being up there. It rained a lot, but not nearly as much as last year. We got a lot more beach time in this year than we did last year which was great. All in all it was a great week and we hope to go back again next year.

Once camp ended we headed to Montreal for a few days with our family which was great, as always. We went to the Biosphere which was a first for us. We'll definitely go back.

After Montreal it was off to Ottawa for a few days. We met up with my sister Lynn and her family there which made it even better. Ottawa seems to have changed a lot since I lived there and I had a hard time finding my way around. We spent time at the Museum of Civilization and the Agriculture Museum (which was pretty much a farm with animals we could look at). Very cool. We also saw the changing of the guard, and one of the guards fainted right in front of us. It wasn't that hot of a day, but he must have been hot in his big, heavy uniform. He went right down. I hope he was OK.

Our time in Ottawa was great, with two exceptions. The first involved the hotel pool. The first night we went down with Lynn and her family. Both Lucas and Darcy fell on the super-slipper pool deck. The second night we were there, Lynn and her family were gone so the four of us went down together. Nick was playing with Darcy and I was playing with Wesley. He wanted to go up and down the stairs over and over and over... You get the picture. One time he was standing at the top of the stairs and as he stepped to come back down, he fell, hitting his head very hard on the pool deck. I picked him up and could tell he wasn't quite right. I called out to Nick just as Wesley went unconscious in my arms. Nick took him and he woke up instantly. What makes this story even worse is that there was a lifeguard on duty this whole time who was watching movies on her laptop and didn't make any attempt to help us. When Nick took him from me, I called out to her and asked for her help. She pretty much came over and said, "He'll be fine." Fortunately, Nick has his first aid certification and knew what to check for and we soon figured that he was OK. We monitored him through the night and he is fine. We were pretty ticked about the lifeguard situation so we filed a complaint with the hotel.

The other problem is that when we got home we realized that both kids' stuffed animals had been left a the hotel. We called from Cambridge but they couldn't find them. For Wesley this isn't a big deal, but for Darcy it was a HUGE deal. She loves that cow so much. It was given to her by Auntie Stef after a trip to Switzerland and Darcy sleeps with her every night. When we called the hotel again this morning we were told that the stuffed animals have been found and that they'll be sent to us by Fed Ex. What a relief.

We spent one last night in Cambridge on the way home and arrived back in Windsor yesterday. We are mostly unpacked now and getting settled back in at home. The kids had a lot of fun but a lot of late nights so it will be good to get them back into their routines. It's great to be away but it's always good to get home again too.