Matthew’s 5th Birthday

Our baby is five years old!  (Actually he’s pretty much five and half now!)

Usually when a birthday is celebrate it’s often a time to reflect on the past, especially when they were born.  Matthew especially brings some hard memories back as it was a difficult time in our lives, having just received the news that James was terminally ill a few weeks earlier (altho the reality of this had not yet set in), coming home for the hospital only two weeks before Matthew was due after being gone for 6 weeks.  I still had to unpack the summer clothes properly (the kids had just been digging through boxes), get the baby stuff out, figure out where to fit Matthew into the equation while also trying to fit all James’ new medical equipment into the house.  Those were crazy weeks!  And the next months were not any easier with little sleep and the reality of James’ illness sinking in.  Matthew was a disguised blessing at the time, an unhappy baby (like most of my kids), wanting lots of attention in a busy household with parents that were sleep deprived.  I remember very little of those first couple months of Matthew’s life, but we’ve made up for that since and now we watch as he gets bigger and bigger and we get further and further away from the baby stage of parenting.

I invited some friend’s over who have kids Matthew’s age for morning coffee and a swim. 

I totally shocked all those who know me, especially my children, by buying a cake for Matthew’s birthday.  It had been crazy busy and hot and time was limited and I had been debating what to make for a cake.  Matthew had requested the hamburgers and fries and I wasn’t in the mood to make a batch of regular “hamburgers” and gluten free ones.  I was totally excited when I happened to be walking through Wal-Mart and what did I see … a hamburger cake!  And on sale too … it was meant to be! 

Somewhere in there I got a burst of energy the night before Matthew’s birthday to make some GF ones as well altho I did debate just letting us eat wheat for the day, but I hate to do that when I know I am quite capable of providing a similiar GF option.  I did ended up staying up past midnight and regretting that moment where that burst of energy came, but when the next day arrived it was all good.

Lighting the candles and getting ready to sing

My big boy!

Opening cards and presents

The kids then proceeded to go swimming.  A bit of a challenge when the pool is not really that big and there are lots of kids, but after everyone cooled off a bit they rotated between the trampoline and the pool.

or playing with the birthday presents … this is a rocket bubble blower.  The kids jump on the blue square which pumps air to make the rocket go flying up and it’s a bubble wand so bubbles follow behind it.  Great fun for a bunch of boys who just want to see how far they can get that rocket to fly.

Matthew’s patience for dad to come home to open the remainder of the presents was a bit tried, he had oepned a couple presents in the morning when Jada was still there, he had presents from his friends, and then he opened another present at lunch time as he just couldn’t wait until after supper.  We had soccer that night, so it was an early supper and off to soccer.  When they got home he was able to open the remainder of his presents.

One of the best presents of the day was a watch.  He was told when he learned the basics of telling time he could have his own watch and he had accomplished this by being able to tell when it’s on the hour and half hour. 

He had also asked for an alarm clock for when school starts so he could be just like the girls and have an alarm wake him up (not that he needs that as he’s almost always up before the alarm).  We found him a rocket ship alarm clock that shines the time on the ceiling (a Zeller's store closing find)

The day ended with some more hamburger cake and off for a good night sleep.  Another year older, they grow up way too fast!

Hangin’ with Matthew

Matthew is always a source of entertainment around here, with his funny sayings, quick wit and pesky character.

He’s a social butterfly, quite happy to say good-bye to mom and go off and live somewhere else for a while, but yet he’s a mommy boy who comes up to me throughout the day and plunks a kiss on my cheek or gives me a hug and tells me he loves me.  He can never get enough of socializing and if I ask him if he missed me while he was gone he’s quite honestly say “No”,  Or as he said one time “Yes” then he paused and said “Well actually I didn’t!”

Matthew loves to hang out with his friends.  Here he is with Reuben and Kurtis having popsicle time

Sometime Vivian would be down at the same time as Kurtis and Reuben.  At first this caused some division but eventually they all learned to either play together or play in pairs and it worked really nicely, actually being a good thing as it evened out the “threes a crowd” problem.

I watched the kids from the window as Kurtis tried and tried to figure out a way to get the big to pull the wagon.  I have to admire his determination!

Trampoline games … don’t ask me how the game works … they seem to understand it … or make it up as they go.

Found a snake … Reuben was the bravest one, willing to pick it up and stuff it in a water bottle and then put a lid on it to save it for when Rob got home so he could kill it.  Matthew won’t touch a snack.

We were overrun by snakes this spring/summer.  Previously we’ve had plenty of snakes on our property but this year was excessively bad.  We also get them in our house.  I used to be able to say “we also get them in our basement”, something we managed to keep secret from the kids until this spring for we knew of their fear of them.  But this spring we had the unwelcomed surprise of finding one in Matthew’s bedroom, which happens to be on the second floor.  How it got there is beyond us, none of the kids would have put it there because all of our kids are scared of them (petrified would be a better word for Rebecca).  I’m just glad Rob happened to be home to take care of it (I was actually sick in bed that day) because I have a pretty big phobia of them as well.  After that we no longer brought them down to the creek when we found them in the house.  Any and all snakes we seen (or should I say Rob seen) were promptly treated to shovel treatment, until thoroughly chopped and dead.

While Matthew loves his friends and socializing and acting all tough it’s wasn’t an uncommon sights for him to be sleeping on the floor in our room come morning time.  Mommy was always the comfort after he would wake in the night, sometimes from a nightmare, sometimes just because.  He much rather sleep on the floor near mom then go back up to his room.  We figured eventually he would outgrow this habit and since he wasn’t in our bed (a big no-no in our house), disturbing our sleep it didn’t matter all that much.  He didn’t really outgrow this habit, he was forced out of it when our room shrank and there was no longer space on the floor for him … after thefirst couple nights of not having room for him he hasn’t reappeared or even come to say he has nightmares

Hernia Repairs

September 6th arrived and it was the first day of school for the girls.  Marietta headed off to Grade 6 and Rebecca to Grade 4.  And Matthew was left at home for another year.  While the girls headed out the door to the bus Matthew prepped for a day at the hospital to have his hernia’s repaired.

We had not talked much about the procedure.  He had been put on the surgery waiting list in February and since you only get a 1-2 week notice before the surgery we never said anything to him.  His belly did not hurt him so there was no use prepping and making him worry about something he could not understand.  It was much different from when Marietta went for her hernia repair.  Marietta was three and a half  and had been in pain for quite some time and finally we were able to convince them to repair her hernia since it would need to be repaired eventually anyways and we suspected that to be the problem.  She counted down the day until her surgery so that her tummy pain could be fixed … only to have the first surgery cancelled when she developed an cold and ear infection.  So she counted down the days again until she finally went in for the repair … just on time because only the day before her surgery the hernia area tore increasing the size of the hernia and making it fairly large … the doctor was quite surprised when he completed the surgery how large it was.  Marietta’s pain took about 6 month to get better after the hernia, causing us to see various doctors and have various tests as they thought maybe there was something else wrong … but in the end she just needed time to heal.

Now for Matthew we didn’t tell him about the surgery until about a week before … more because he overheard a conversation about it.  Not wanting him to worry for days about what they were going to do I just didn’t say anything and figured I’d prep him the day before or so.  Well even though he found out the week before it did not fizzle him much.  He declared he was getting his belly button fixed and away he went.  He had no pain so the concept of pain or the pain that would come from the surgery was foreign.  He just knew they would fix his belly button so it wouldn’t stick out anymore.  We explained some basic stuff, as he does have some vague memory of when he got his arm casted after he broke it.  But he didn’t seem to concerned either way.

Matthew also had two hernia’s.  We were not 100% sure of the second one until he went into surgery but it was suspected he had an inguinal hernia as well as an umbilical hernia.  The plan was to go in laparoscopically through the incision in the umbilical area to see if there was another hernia and then if there was a hernia to proceed to repair it.

Matthew’s surgery was schedule for 2pm, which meant no eating since 12am.  He was allowed to drink  first thing in the morning so we encouraged him to drink as much as he could to tie him over.  He did well.  We left for Hamilton earlier on to keep him distracted and went to the library so he could play for a bit and pick out some videos to watch after his surgery.

We had to be at the hospital at 12pm … thankfully there was a TV at the waiting room to distract him and that did pretty good. 

  

 

Just before the surgery you get a chance to talk to the people involved in the surgery, including the doctor.  At this time we found out that they DID NOT have him scheduled for the inguinal hernia check and repair, but only for the umbilical repair (even though I had discussed this at pre-op to make sure he was scheduled for both).  In order to do the inguinal repair they need the proper laparoscopic equipment and the time to do the actual repair if it was needed.  It was a little bit of time of frustration … some things just never change!! It being a minor surgery I wasn’t too worked up about the need for the surgery, just the frustration with the system and how they never get it right.  I was not going to have them do the umbilical hernia repair if they could not check for the inguinal and have time to repair it … minor surgeries or not we weren’t going to do anaesthetic more then we had to.  Thankfully it all came together and they were able to get the equipment needed … and rather quickly too … so we were able to proceed as planned.

Here you can see his nerves acting up … as well as his lack of food I’m sure.  This is just before he went into surgery … he refused to look at the camera or the people who came to talk to use before the surgery.

 

Everything went well with the surgery, he did indeed have a moderate size inguinal hernia which they repaired.  They had to make an incision near his groin area to do this, but now he’s all fixed up.

I was expecting a miserable boy, thrashing, crying and throwing himself around after the surgery, but he was calm and sleepy.   No complaint about pain, if you asked him if it hurt he said no.  Recovery room was slow when we got there and so they let me just crawl up on the bed and snooze with him for a while.  After a while they encouraged him to wake up a bit by letting him have a popiscle … actually three popsicles.  Before the surgery the nurse had told him that his hospital band meant he could have FREE popsicles.   He understood this to mean THREE popsicles and he was going to hold them to this.  He inhaled those three popsicles and then was moved over to Same Day Surgery recovery … where he received another popsicles.   Here also they were not the busy and were completely encouraging about letting him sleep for a while, so we snuggled up on the bed again and had another snooze.  Around 6pm we decided to wake him a bit and see how he was doing and if he was ready to go home.  By this time the morphine would be wearing off, but he still said it didn’t hurt, until he tried to get dressed, then he realize he had some pain.  What a trooper!

Wheelchair ride to the van … not so thrilling when you’re not feeling well.

We made a bed on the couch in the living room with a view to the TV

For the next few days he had free access to the TV … and if you know Matthew, you know what this means.  Surprisingly even Matthew gets tired of TV and stops watching from time to time.

  

Recovery went amazingly quickly compared to what we expected.  For Marietta it took some time before she could get up and walk or do stairs.  Matthew on the other hand surprised us by crawling up the stairs that same night while I was busy putting the girls to bed.  Proud as a peacock he showed us how he could walk and crawl up the stairs.  A few days of tylenol and within a few days you would never have guessed that he just had surgery … that weekend we headed off to Chatham and he was playing like normal, we had to remind him that he had to be careful, walk slowly, don’t run and jump, no trampoline, etc.  Picking him up and carrying him had to be done careful but overall he was mended.

The old belly button

The new belly button … they did an excellent job of hiding the incision in the folds.  He doesn’t have a nice innie now, but it definitely looks better and we’ll see with time how it develops.  The other incision is low in the groin area and healed up nicely, which I’m sure over the years will fade to almost not being noticeable.

  

Surprise Birthday

Marietta’s birthday was on July 14th, when we were on holidays.  She had hoped to have a birthday sleepover/campover, but her friends seemed to be on holidays each time she hoped to have it.  So after some time she sort of gave up and decided she’d settle on going out for supper with the family instead.  I could see her disappointment, as well as her willingness to settle for the next best … so meanwhile mom was at work behind the scenes trying to organize a sleepover still.

We had set a date for going out for supper, except I sort of forgot as in my head I knew she was going to have a party … that date came and we made plans for the day and suddenly Marietta pointed out that I had said we were going out for supper that night … oooppppsss, I forget how I weaseled my way out of that one, but we reset the date … for the actual day of her surprise “party” (at this age it’s no longer a party but just having friends over).

Tuesday, August 23rd rolled around and the plan was to meet Steve and Cec’s for an afternoon at Binbrook Conservation and then go out for supper … at least that’s the plan Marietta knew.  Rob went off to school (dutch) that morning and after he was done school he ran some errands and then went to pick up Kelsie and Esther and met us at Binbrook Conservation.  Since Rob had school that day I drove separately to the park, we got there before Rob and set up and the kids went off to play.   Kelsie and Esther made there way to our spot at the park under our dingy boat … but they didn’t make it the whole way and Marietta noticed the extra legs under the boat.  She was quite thrilled.  We spent the afternoon at the beach and then headed home …. no going out for supper afterall!

Late night dessert …. I think it’s called Candies with a Little Bit of Ice Cream.

The girls slept out in the tent, doing as girls do … chattering until late.  I was awake in the middle of the night taking Matthew to the bathroom … I think it was around 3:30-4am and as I came down the stairs I heard talking outside in the tent.  Wow, how did they manage to stay awake that long????  But then I looked at the tent and I thought “ah, that doesn’t look right”.  The tent had collapsed in the wind, a pole broke, (it was pretty windy that night) and the girls had woken to a tent just above their faces.  I had heard them as they were attempting to gather up their stuff and come in the house.

Jessica came to join the girls the next morning and the plans for the day had been to spend the day playing in the pioneer fort in the barn … but the high winds ruined those plans.  After that extreme wind storm we had in the spring we discovered that the roof on the barn had shifted, leaving it somewhat unsafe in windy weather.  The kids are not allowed in the barn when it is windy … and it was definitely windy that day.  Windy enough that they also really could not play outside … altho they did try swimming and jumping on the trampoline, but it was too cold and windy.

But kids are kids and given some time and they can come up with other things to do ….

Present time

  

Tea Party

 

I forget what they called this game, but they worked in teams where they would blindfold each other and then put a small amount of food on a spoon and the person had to eat it and guess what it was.

 

Indoor picnic instead of outdoors.  Marietta and Rebecca are taking voice lessons and here they are practicing/performing their song “How much is that Doggie in the Window?” and the others are acting like the dogs.

 

While I usually do not encourage TV/Videos when having friends over we did end up watching a movie in the afternoon to pass some of the time away since swimming and playing outside wasn’t really an option … movies and birthdays sort of go together.

Marietta was certainly surprised and they had a good time together.  This is the last time that Marietta saw Jessica, who has now moved to Australia.

Greenview Aviaries Park and Zoo

On the Friday of our holidays we left Flint, Michigan around noon and headed back to Canada. With no issues getting back into Canada we carried on to our next destination which was Greenview Aviaries Park and Zoo. This was another stop the kids had very much been looking forward to. When the girls were little and we lived in the area we had gone for a day trip to this zoo and they had very fond memories of it and have often talked about this place, many time begging to go back there sometime. Of course they don't remember much about the animals there, it was the fun park that they remembered the most. They will admit that they were a bit disappointed that the park did not meet the expectation of their memories. I had to remind them that they were much younger at the time, I'm guessing Marietta was four and Rebecca was two or somewhere in that general area. A park of this size, when they had never been to an amusement park or zoo or anything of that assort before that would have been quite something for them ... and now at the ages of 10 and 8, when they are getting close to the end of their playground years this isn't quite so big and special anymore. But needless to say it was still fun and they still had a very good time ... I think it was just the disappointment that it wasn't quite what they had hyped it up to be in their heads.

Since we had been in the van for a bit we decided to have a late lunch/snack and let the kids run off some energy before we headed off to see the animals. The mistake we had made the last time we went was that we first went to see the animals and told the kids they could play afterwards. They were not as focused on the animal then since they only wanted to get back to that big huge playground. So the kids (and I) went to check everything out after we ate ... while Rob had a nap (again) ... packing up the hotel room had taken a bit out of him because he couldn't handle turning around within a small room, he had a nap before we left and I made a trip to the store to get him some Gravol (motion sickness medication - seeing as it's not called Gravol in the States) ... which didn't really help ... so another nap was needed.

I wandered around with the camera, following Matthew as he zoomed from one area to the next, trying to see and try everything so he could decide what he liked best. It really is a nice park with so much to do.

This was new since our last visit















There was disappointment for the girls as they remembered the balls being much bigger. I had to remind them that they were much bigger now and to look at how big the balls were in comparison to Matthew

I remember Marietta spending a fair amount of time on the hop balls the last time we went since they were the newest and latest rave at the time. Since then we've had our own at home, so it isn't so thrilling anymore.

Here was another disappointment. The last time we were there they had the balls in a much deeper pit, so when you jumped in you could actually jump in and get buried in the balls. With todays sanitary and safety concerns regarding ball pits I guess they decided to go wider with only a thin layer.

Matthew still did some jumping

and tried to bury himself

A manual treadmill, who needs all that fancy equipment when you can just build yourself something like this

Saucer Swing ... Matthew wasn't so sure of this as it moves and he doesn't have control, so he jumped off as soon as the picture was taken and let the girls do the swinging part.

There were several trampolines with a half-decent bounce ... better then the average homestyle trampoline

The zoo part also carries a large variety of animals, although it did have many duplicate cages along the way ... but if you want to see your basic variety of animals, from lions, to bears, to zebras, to ostriches, to bison, to lemurs, to monkeys, to alligators, lizards, to deer, to goats etc ... you'll find it here. The difference between here and other more commonly known places was mostly the fact that it's a self guided walking tour (I'm not sure if they do anything more special for schools), there are no special shows. The other thing we were disappointed with was the fact that there was no information about the animals ... unless someone forgot to give us a sheet that explained them seeing as there seemed to be a number system to follow.

Albino Racoon

We were there at feeding time. We couldn't believe how many tomatoes and applies they threw in for the handful of tortoises in the pen. Here it would have been nice if they provided some info on the difference between a turtle and tortoise, we sort of guessed the answer that turtles live more in the water and tortoise on land, but it's nice to know because once you leave you forget to look it up ... unless you blog :)

Petting the goats

The girls fed the deer ... thankfully it was on the last nibbles that one of the deer decided to take a small chunk out of Marietta's finger

Elephant Ride

There is a miniture village there also

It was too chilly of a day to use the splash pad, much to Matthew's disappointment, but he found another highlight that kept him very busy - the zip-line . Thankfully Matthew didn't go near it until closer to the end of our stay because once he went on one time there was no getting him to go anywhere else.

The cable was in definite need of some tightening, but the kids figured out how to make a go at it without hitting pebble-bottom. Matthew was still small enough that it was mostly okay if he just bent his knees. The girls had to curl up upside down in order to get past the lowest part ... a bit of a safety hazard I suppose, but they had it figured out and had sooooooo much fun!! Rob found himself full-time employed for quite some time helping Matthew up and down.

We left around 8pm when the park closed and went out for supper before heading off to London to spend a couple days at Ted and Lynda's. We went from scorching hot weather to cool, pants and long sleeve weather that was damp and yukky and not so inviting for park or beach hanging out. So we just hung out at home, the kids played, the adults visited. Sunday we did a bit more visiting with Jason and Carol and Mom and Menno and then headed home to our own beds so that the next day the kids could "recuperate" somewhat before heading back to a new school year. And there ended another summer holidays ... they fly by so fast ... but then, so do the school years!!