A Teaparty to Remember

My baby girl turned 4!

I'm not quite sure how that happened, one  minute she was a baby and just learning how to do everything! And now she's 4! She's excited to start school!

She can write how name and knows her numbers, letters, colours, can sing all the words to her favorite songs and likes to learn how to do things with Special Agent Oso. Her new favorite channel is Disney Junior, no longer Treehouse and she has favorite princesses (Cinderella) and colours (rainbow) and she loves fish and mermaids.

Katheryn has been talking about her birthday cake for months! It was supposed to be white, with strawberries. And on her birthday we were supposed to all hide and jump out and sing "Happy Birthday!"

She opened presents, ate her favorite breakfast (pancakes) and lunch (pizza) and dinner (more pizza - but at a restaurant). She got to go to one of her favorite places - The Ronald McDonald room at Holland Bloorview, with her boy-teacher.
She had a shirt that has bubble guppies on it. It says

What time is it?

It's birthday time!

And she had a frilly skirt - no birthday tiara though (she hated it).
Katheryn had a great birthday. She told us that it was perfect!

She didn't want her birthday to end. Good thing - because her birthday party was on Saturday!
It was a Max and Ruby themed birthday tea party. And everyone had to dress up.
Tiara's and bow ties were encouraged!

It was a small party - just family, but everyone participated in my craziness!

And my sister in law made Nick his perfect bow tie!

Katheryn was too busy running around to stop and let me take many pictures (she spoiled me on her actual birthday).

So what do you need for a Max and Ruby Tea party?

First you need some crazy people to wear bunny ears!
OK maybe just one crazy person - but I wasn't the only one

You need tea cups.
I didn't think I had any, until I remember my grandmothers good dishes set - perfect tea party tea cups! (For the adults - the kids had plastic)

Decorations!

Appropriate snacks!
My sister in law made these! Tea cups and tea bags!

And Birthday cake of course!

The cake would have looked significantly better if I had properly read the instructions and not put the cake transfer on upside down!
But the kids didn't care!

Both of them thought it was so cool that Ruby and Max were on the birthday cake!
And each picked out the piece that they wanted.

To finish out the day I had a whole bag of crafts that were bunny/Easter themed.
We didn't get a chance to do many of the crafts - everyone had so much fun being together!

But I made sure we decorated some Easter cookies before everyone left!

Happy Birthday Baby Girl!
I hope that you had as much joy celebrating your birthday as we do celebrating you in our lives!
We have told Katheryn that now she is 4, it means she has to eat her vegetables. (It hasn't worked so far).
I think that 4 is going to be a great year!

Our weekend was so crazy busy, I'm dating this blog post as April 5 - Katheryn's birthday, even though the party was Sat April 7.

Walker Success - for real!

We have walker success!
I know I've said this before. And every walker we've had we have had some type of success with. But never like this.
Nick absolutely LOVES it!
Look at the joy on this face!

And he wants to be in it. He asks to walk in it.

And then he just goes!

He would be running down the hall if he could figure out how to get his feet and legs not to tangle themselves up.

He's been leaning to one side, I guess we will work on that. But for now I'm just so happy moving!

 Nickolas is doing well with walking in straight lines, and for small distances in the house.
I'm not sure how to get him to use it more, actually functionally, instead of just when we want to work on it. I'd hope that he could use it to move around the house, instead of crawling.

I'm not sure how to make that happen. Of course crawling is easier for him. And yes he can walk in the walker, but why would he when he can crawl?
I guess its the same as when he was army crawling and we knew he could 4-point crawl. But he didn't know/want to crawl like that, when army crawling was working just fine.
I guess it just takes time.

Nick doesn't have to concentrate when he's walking now. Which leaves him time to make funny faces when I'm taking pictures of him walking!

Picture Perfect

Recently another mother Jill seemed to read my mind. If you haven't already seen everyone sharing her post - please take a minute and read it here.

I wake up every morning knowing how lucky I am and how blessed I am to be where I am today. I know that sounds super mushy. And life isn't perfect, anything but some days. Its not supposed to be - how boring would that be?!

The purpose of my blog is to share the great things that are happening in our lives – and the lousy things too. It is to share my thoughts and it is also to become something greater, part of a larger community. When we first got the diagnosis that something was going to be different online sources helped me to realize what life would be like with spina bifida. Yes there are tough times, and happy times but mostly there are just living times.

It's like when you are having a conversation with an acquaintance about something, and then it comes out that you have a child that was born with spina bifida. This happened to me alot this past week when I was doing a breastfeeding workshop and sharing some of my experiences.

I very often have someone say "I'm sorry" or "I don't know if I could do that". No worries, don't be sorry, and you don't have to know you can do something. It just happens, you just do it.

I love writing, I write the blog and I have journals that I started the day I found out I was pregnant with Katheryn. I feel so creative when I'm writing, like I'm actually doing something. And I’ve always wanted to write a book. I enjoy reading other books and I knew I had the material to write something myself. So this month I decided to start.

Reliving and writing my thoughts of the diagnosis, the birth, those first few weeks. It reminds me how very far I have come and how I really wish I knew how happy our life is.

You know how sometimes the best pictures, your favorite pictures aren't the ones where everyone has their best 'cheese fries' face on. It is the grumpy faces, the funny faces, the unexpected true laughing pictures - those are the life pictures.

Well, that's life. Not those perfect moments when everything lines up just how you always wanted it. The best moments are those ones that you don't plan, you don't expect and just sneak up on you. And turn out to picture perfect.

Standing on his own two feet

Nickolas is showing off some new skills.
We've been working on getting Nick to stand with us supporting above his knees (we started in January at his hips).
But now he decided to take it to a whole new level!

Nick started to crawl over to me when I'm sitting on the floor. Then he pulls himself up onto his feet and falls down. Then one day he let go, and just stood there for a couple of seconds!
He did this a couple of times before I realized what he was doing.

So this week I set up a video.
You have to watch the whole thing to get him standing by himself.

I think Nick has also learned the joy of dancing!

Walking the Walker Journey

We are on the walker journey again.

Nickolas has started to scream and cry when he's in his front one. That was walker #4. Every time I think it might be the right one, and he likes it at first, but then it stops meeting his needs and we move on.

We are moving on again.

It's time for four wheels. He needs something faster that moves when he moves.

So 2 weeks ago we tried something new at the end of physio (which he is doing so great! Exceeding goals!).

Walker races!

Poor Nick had very wobbley legs - but he still wanted to get that sticker!

So we had some ideas of what to do the next week.

Posterior walker, something that is deeper - so he can't rest his bum against the back. And 4 wheels.

We did it at the end of physio again, but his legs are stronger even from the week before!

Now the bad news.
We didn't have one that we could borrow.
We're going to try to problem solve again this coming week, but I don't know how we are going to decide to purchase one if we don't have the ability to bring it home and try it out.
But the plan is to put the order in for one before the end of this PT block.

Katheryn LOVES coming to physio with us at Grandview. She says that this is where all the fun toys are. Like for example when everyone is watching Nickolas climbing the stairs up and down, she is free to go and check out all the fun boxes!

This was our last session with Sheka :(
She has been with us consistently since we got picked up from Grandview. She is great! She loves coming to see us and have a quick little visit with Nickolas and see how he is doing. She's moving to another section in Grandview. But we will really miss her!