Photo Shoot

We had another photo shoot done on Monday with the same photographer that did our pregnancy shots, and then again when Violet was born.  She's the sister of Marn's friend and co-worker, Marcie.
So far, the two she's posted on Facebook are pretty cute.  I hope the others turn out as well!
You will be able to see the "public" ones on her blog soon at http://edisonphotography.com/blog/  We're told some will be on there today or tomorrow.

Desmond

Well I've had my week and a half at home, and it's back to work for me.... it went way too quickly, as it always does.  So far, he's been really great.  His latch is way better than Violet's was, so the breast feeding with Marn went as good as can be expected.  The first 2-3 days waiting for Marn's milk to come in weren't very fun as he was up every hour or so looking for food, but after he got some food into him and he settled into a more normal routine fairly easily.  I wouldn't say he's on a schedule yet, but he is sleeping well, getting regular feedings in and having longer awake times.  He hasn't regained his birth weight yet, but he's slowly getting there and probably gaining a little every day.  He's 9 lbs 10 oz now, so only 3 ounces short.

Violet is doing well with him as well.  She hasn't gotten too "out of joint" about him yet, but we suspect that's because she is way down on the grandchild list, and is used to having other kids around.  She's had lots of time with both Grandmas each with other young kids, so I don't think it was too big of a shock for her.  The biggest thing right now is she loves him a little too much!  She wants to kiss and hug and hold and poke and prod him all the time, sometimes, doing it a little too hard for our tastes, constantly being told to do it softer, gentler.... or ok, that's ENOUGH, stop already!  Both Marn and I have caught ourselves getting too angry at her for "loving on him" a little too much or a little too hard which upsets her.  It's a tough balance!  We try and involve her a lot by asking her to get diapers, blankets, bum bum balm, or whatever, and she loves to do it. She's a great little helper.  Her reply most of the time is, "OK Mommy/Daddy.  I will get it for you", then off she runs to look for it.  It's too stinking cute!  Yesterday after she retrieved the bum bum balm for me, I used it and looked away for a second only to look back with her finger full of it trying to put it on Desmond's bum as well.  She also says that he's her best friend and that she likes him. lol

Anyway, things are going well.  Hopefully the little guy will gain back that weight so that Mom can sleep a little longer than the 3 hour stretches she's getting now.  She's waiting until that 9 lb 13 oz mark before letting him sleep as long as he wants.

Welcome Home Desmond Kyle Rolt!

A bit late for an announcement, but here it is...
Desmond finally made an appearance into the world on Friday, October 15, 2010 at 6:32 AM!  Apparently he was in a rush to meet everyone; Marn started labour at about 1:30 AM Friday morning.  At 5 AM things were getting heavy so we called her Mom to come over. "No Rush, but come when you can" I told her, or something to that affect.  Her and Drew came at about 50 minutes later.  During that time, Marn's labour intensified a lot.  We headed to the hospital at about 6:10 AM.
When we got to the hospital, I got out with Marn and put her in a wheelchair.  I was going to wheel her up and then go park the car, but she told me to go park it and meet her up there.  I heard this after, but she had contractions before the elevator, in the elevator, and then again before getting into the child birth area.  A nurse came by to let her in to admit her.  I showed up shortly after and just in time to hear, "she's 8 cm and her membrane is bulging!".  I'm thinking to myself, wow 8 cm!?  Marn's telling the nurses now that she has to push, so they wheel her into a birthing room and get her on a bed.  No time to even change into a robe. Now Marnie is asking for water and the nurses tell her that they can't leave her, so I offer to get it.  The nurse turns to me and says, "you might miss it".  I'm like, what?  Seriously?  We just got here!  I decide to get it anyway, and by the time I get back - maybe 2 minutes? (the kitchen was just down the hall, not far) I see that the doctor is there and Marn's water broke.  Two nurses have her legs up and she's pushing...
I find out later that one of the nurses was "down there" checking her when Marn started pushing and her water broke all over the nurse.  Apparently it was like a water balloon and soaked her!  LOL  I'm SO MAD that I missed that!
Anyway, around this time, after another contraction, Marn yells out that she wanted an epidural... I think everyone in the room laughed and the doctor tells her that it's much too later for that.  The baby was starting to crown, but Marn didn't know this.
5 minutes later, Desmond was born!  The doc says to Marn, reach down and feel your baby, and she was like, what??  I was first to yell out that it's a boy so I may have been a little bit excited about that.   :)

So to give you an idea of the time line here, we arrived at the hospital at about 6:20 AM and he was born at 6:32 AM!  LOL  Yeah, 12 minutes!  All in all, the whole thing took 5 hours.  Quick?  Heck, yes!
Marn's Mom wasn't too happy about that because she wanted to be there for it... no time!

Well, it's official, we're a family of four!  Wow, that sounds weird!  We were out today and Marn said to me, "can you watch 'the kids' for a sec?"  That sounded very strange....

Enough blabber, on with some pics!

Sleeping Beauty

For Violet's first Christmas (2 years ago!), I bought her the Sleeping Beauty Blu-Ray/DVD.  It seemed appropriate.  I've since started a little Disney collection in Blu-Ray. So far only Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and hopefully today Beauty and the Beast.  I missed out on the good price of Pinocchio when it was released, but maybe some day still.  Anyway, I think it's a nice little "tradition" and I think she'll love them growing up.

We hadn't watched any until the other day because she just wasn't old enough (she may not even be yet), but Marn was out at the movies with her friend, and I wanted to do something fun with Violet.  So I opened it up and we watched some of it together.  She LOVED IT!  Maybe she was in a good mood that night, or something, but she was interacting with the characters and telling me about what was happening.  We didn't watch a lot because it was getting late.  The first time the grown up (16 year old) Princes Aurora was shown, there is a scene where she's walking through the forest and starts signing (humming? yodeling?) with all the animals coming out.

Here's a refresher - Fast forward to 2:50 minutes in.
Sorry about the size - it's too big to fit in this template.



Ok, so we're sitting on the couch watching this, and all of the sudden after a few "verses" of the humming, Vi starts singing and Yodeling away mimicking the TV.  It was SO FUNNY, and SO CUTE that I was laying on the couch trying to cover my face and stifle my laughter. When the scene was over, I HAD to get it on camera, so I rewound to the start of the scene, grabbed the new camcorder, set it up and played it again.... no joy.  I ruined the moment, I guess. I'm going to have to do this again and prepare for it another day.  I SO Badly want to get this on camera...

Birthday Party!

We had Violet's 2nd birthday party last Sunday, and it was a really fun time.  She was living it up and seemed like she had a blast with some of her friends and family.  We really lucked out in that Marn's grandma called a few weeks ago and said she wanted to come down for a visit because her condo was undergoing renovations.  It just happened to coincide with Violet's party so she was able to come and celebrate with us, which was great.

The bathroom hasn't seen much action since I painted the first coat, or since the party.  It's basically done now.  We hung a new mirror, and I touched up some of the mudding on the walls, so it still needs a finish coat and floor/door/window trim, as well as ceiling paint.  It looks good and we got a lot of compliments on it at the party.  :)

 Tickle trunk full of dress up clothes from Mom and Dad

 Great Ganny checking out the 3D book from a grab bag  :)

 Checking out the Bathtub Toy Scoop with her helpers

 Blowing Candles

 cake smile!

The kitchen saw some updates recently too -- we bought Marn's parent's appliances from them when they bought new ones.  They look great and really update the kitchen, but the fridge was a little too big for the space. I had to cut out about 8 inches of the cabinet above it, and then when we slid it into place, it didn't quite fit width-wise either!  We knew it would be tight as the dimensions were almost exactly the same, but we were hopeful.  It's about 8 inches from going back all the way to the wall, so either the floor is not level, or the cabinets aren't.  So, the plan is I'm going to sand the side of the cabinet down a bit to make it fit.  lol  I'm hoping to do that today.

The car situation has changed recently for us as well, and we've decided to sell my 2-door Accord instead of the older van (did I mention that we bought Marn's parents old van?)  :-(  It just makes sense.  It needs a lot of work - as it always seem to need these days - and it wouldn't work for us if the van had to go into the shop for repairs.  A rear-facing car seat will not work, and even it if it did, it definitely wouldn't fit two car seats.  So, for a short while, we're a two van family.  I say short while, because we're actually considering buying Dads BMW from him as he is trading up to a new one.  Depending on the price (I haven't looked up prices on used ones yet), and the condition, I think it's a good move.  It can still fit car seats in a pinch, will probably be better on gas than a van, and lets face it; it's not another van!  He said it has less than 120,000 kms on it which I think is great.  If we do that, we should be set for cars for a few more years.  We aren't having much faith in the older van these days either, so it might make good sense to dump that now.  We'll see.

New Video Camera

We decided recently to go ahead and get a new video camera and since we've been piling on the Air Miles recently, decided that it would be a great thing to get with those instead of cash.  It's probably a much higher end model than we "need" and if we were buying it with money, we likely would not be getting this one... it retails for +$700!  But "free" with Air Miles (no tax, no shipping)?  Yes please!  It's an older model (last year?) and when it came out, it was over $1000.

We decided to get a flash memory model instead of the hard drive or tape based ones.  It's super light and small as a result, but of course limited in memory (recording time) compared to a hard drive one which is common to see 120 gb or more.  Ours has dual SD memory slots, and we bought two 16gb cards which gives us 5 minutes shy of 3 hours at the maximum HD resolution.  At medium resolution it's 5 hours 45 minutes which should be lots.  SD cards can be had at 32gb, and more recently higher, but they get quite costly above that.  Two 16 gb cards were a good compromise for cost and recording time.  And it's easy to expand later when prices for those cards get cheaper.  So all in out of pocket was $90 for the two memory cards.

Looking forward to using it and seeing the picture quality!

We had another tape camcorder that Den gave us to use that he found around the office and was being unused.  It came in very handy as we didn't have one before and we put it to good use.  We have about 10 cassette tapes laying around now about 1 hour of video each.  I'll need to get them on the computer and at the very least archive them onto DVD.  When we sell it, we'll send over the profits.  ;)