MRI time

It is that time of year again.

The yearly MRI.

We got the appointment card in the mail in June, but I didn't think much of it until a couple of days before.

But then I started getting nervous.

Last year Nickolas was not a happy camper after the anesthetic.

He screamed and cried the entire ride home.

And now he's 1 year older, one year more aware of what is going on. So then I started worrying about how he would be.

I wasn't sure if we should try to prepare him a little bit, or just go with the flow.
I decided to jsut leave it as "a trip to the hospital" and go from there.
Nick's brand new t-shirt had arrived, so I figured it was a perfect time to show it off.
And even though we could probably have carried him in and out of the appiontment, I decided to take his chair to let him move around if he wanted to.

Nick didn't really seem to notice that he wasn't allowed to have anything to eat or drink.
He wasn't too sure about the hospital gown, but we got in relatively quickly.
We even skipped the pre-sedation waiting room.

Nick had a little bit of time to look around and explore the sedation room (I don't know what it's called, but it is where he goes to sleep before he actually goes into the MRI).
He was excited that there were characters on the ceiling.

We brought his knight to see if it would help him explore the equipment and room.

  

After everyone was ready it was time for Nick to lie down. He was not happy.
He knew that something was going to happen and he didn't want it to.
He had a mask that went over his face with his choice of scent (watermelon).
He was afraid and crying, I touched him and kissed him and he slowly drifted off.

Then it was Kyle and me - distraction time for about an hour.
Since neither of us had eaten breakfast (since Nick couldn't it wasn't really fair to eat in front of him), we headed off to the cafeteria.
And then the gift shop.
Bad idea.
Between Kyle and I we both had armfulls of gifts and ideas to buy the kids. We put alot back, but did pick up something special for Nick for when he woke up.

It took about 15-20 minutes for him to really by awake, but he thought this new dinosaur was great!

We even got a small 'roar' out of him.

So now the dinosaur has a name Roary

Nick didn't want to let him go.

Pretty soon we got some smiles out of him.

And he drank a whole juice box.

So we were ready to go.

No tears, no crying. He bounced back amazingly well. So much better than last year.

We also got to take home the mask that smelled like watermelon. Hopefully we can do something about that fear about the mask right before going to sleep.

Now I just have to try not to stress about the results...

Family, family and more family!

The August long weekend means that it is time for our annual Philips Family Reunion!

I don't remember what year we started doing it, but it is the one time of the year when all of the family can get together, catch up, show off, watch grow and relax.

Kushog Lake is a beautiful swimming lake, BUT it is deep and Katheryn was well aware that she needs to be in her life jacket whenever she is close to the edge. (I may have stressed it a little too much, a week ago Katheryn woke up from a bad dream because she was near the water without her life jacket on).

The cottage hasn't grown in the last 50 years or so, it is a 3 bedroom cottage. But the family has grown significantly since my grandfather built it. So when we all meet in the year we camp it!



The kids love camping!

The water, the outdoors.

Katheryn didn't want to actually get in the water, she was just really happy to fill bucket after bucket of water and destroy sand castles. And following around the older girls (who were a huge, big help).

But Nick was the water baby! We swam and swam and swam. (It was alot easier once I got a noodle to help support us). There was a pirate ship on the lake!
Nick and I kept watching out for Captain Hook

Every family dinner needs to have our picture. And since we are too big to eat inside, what better place to set up our photo than with our dinner table!
I think we are all here, except Katheryn was in the cottage napping and we are missing 2 dogs (and Nick is hidden a bit).

The weekend was supposed to have a rainy day, so I made sure we had a bunch of fun things to do when we were stuck inside! The goody bag came out a little earlier and our craziness started to show a bit!

We also pulled out the badminton set and the 'kids' had lots of fun bouncing a birdie back and forth.

The cousins liked playing together, and teaching the younger ones!

The beginning of the weekend was a little bit hectic, with lots of clinging and crying. But by the end of the weekend we were more relaxed. Nick started to relax, and while I could never be too far away, Nick did take some opportunity to get into trouble (like colouring all over his face).

Or doing some exploring!

The cottage weekend was a huge success, the kids all had alot of fun, relaxing, exploring and playing with their cousins. It seems like 3 days is just not long enough.

But we'll take the time we have to breathe and enjoy the peace and tranquility.

Proud Mom

Just because

Love these kids!

The joy of being a boy...

Nickolas 'found' a mud puddle, and went right to it!
I thought for a minute of keeping him back, imagining the clean laundry that I had just finished...

But how can you say no to this pure joy!

Katheryn was very proud of her contribution to making the puddle!

Counting

Nickolas is being a show-off again!

Nickolas is counting to 15!

Like everything in Nick's life, he kept this little secret to himself, and then blasted his poor mommy out of the water!
We've started to use potty time for some learning, we did colours and then this week I thought we could move onto numbers. The potty is a great time to work, because it is quiet time, usually without big sister who likes to give him the answers.
When we started this week I was so happy that he counted to 3! Or counted 3 things that we had around the tub.

Then yesterday I had 10 toys all lined up for us to count.And he just kept going, all the way up to 15! (or five-teen).
I asked him if I could go and grab my camera, not really 100% sure that he would give a repeat performance for the camera. But off he went! I'm sure in his head he was saying (oh mom!)

There have been a number of things that I have been worried about developmentally with Nickolas. He didn't know his colours - or I should say, he refused to say his colours (saying that everything is blue) for the longest time.
But I was worried about his numbers, he didn't know them (or so I thought).
I guess this means we will tackle the alphabet next!
Sorry kid, no rest!