Enjoying January ;)

January is often a blah kind of month! But we've had a good January so far!! The weather has warmed up considerably, which has helped!

Blake had his first gymnastics class on Friday. I was so impressed with how it went!! He had so much fun and I think this is the most involved he's been in a class thus far! He was very independent and outgoing! Coach Shannon was fantastic and he really took to her. He's also been to two of Madison's (our friends little girl) birthday parties at this gymnastics club, so he was familiar with it. After the class, when I was getting him in his car seat he asked me where Madison was?! I guess he thought she'd be there :)

Saturday morning we headed to the YMCA for the kids swimming lessons. Emerson went first with Cal, while Blake and I watched! She looked like she had a great time with her big smiles and splashing!! Cal said the only part she wasn't too happy about was being put in a baby boat!! Blake thought it was pretty neat watching Em at swimming lessons! He kept calling her name and waving at her! 3/4 of the way through Emerson's lesson, I took Blake to the family change room and got him ready for his lesson. When Em's lesson was over Cal brought her to the change room and got Blake! It worked out quite well! Blake had fun during his lesson and spent a lot of time on the slide! At one point he was sitting at the top for awhile and Cal asked him what he was doing and he replied, "Watching the teacher!" Saturday evening my parents came over to babysit the kids while Cal and I went out for dinner. We had a great evening out! We spend a lot of time together in the evenings, but it's nice to get out of the house by ourselves once in awhile too!! Both the kids have had a cold since Tuesday, but Saturday night Blake's cold took a turn for the worse. At around 10:30 pm I heard him wheezing over the baby monitor, so I went into his room to listen and sure enough he was. So I called Health Link to see what advice they had and held the phone up to him so the nurse on the other end could hear, just to make sure I wasn't exaggerating!! But she did say it was wheezing and advised that if it wasn't waking him up that we just keep an eye on him and bring him to a Doctor in the a.m. But if it got worse to bring him in immediately. So I turned up the volume on his monitor and went to bed. At 1 am I woke up to an ear piercing scream. I ran into his room, to find him sitting up and struggling to get a good breath. I rushed into our room and told Cal I was taking him to the hospital. I thought it was croup, because he has had croup once before, but it's pretty scary to hear your child having trouble breathing. I put the windows down in the truck (the cold air sometimes helps reduce the swelling in the airways) and seriously sped SO fast to the E.R. Thankfully they got him into a room fairly fast and gave him an oral steroid to open his airways and help him breath easier. They monitored him for a little while and decided he could go home and we're to bring him back if he gets worse again. He's been pretty good, still has that croupy cough off and on and has trouble breathing when he's laying down. I took him outside twice last night, hoping the cold air would help and I think it did a little bit. Thankfully, he doesn't have an extremely bad case of croup.

Cal was off today and we had fun playing outside, shovelling and going for a sleigh ride! Well, actually Emerson is the only one who went for a ride ... the rest of us walked! She has so much fun in the sleigh!! And she loves it when I run and then spin her around really fast!! She giggles and giggles!! It's so cute :) And Blake loves helping us pull the sleigh! Today he stopped and pulled the blanket up over Em's legs and said to her, "Cold Em? There you go!" It was sooooo ... adorable!! Blake also had fun riding his bike up and down the driveway!! He has an old plastic tricycle and Cal had to adjust the seat today because he's grown so much since fall!! He'll definitely need a better bike this summer, because he can pedal like a pro now!! He had fun outside and hopefully the cool air will help him breathe easy tonight and sleep well too.

Blake missed preschool today. Croup is contagious and the last thing we want is for him to pass it on to someone else. Hopefully he'll be doing a lot better by Wednesday, because we're looking forward to meeting some friends at Kidz Quarterz in Sherwood Park that morning. We've never been before, but have heard it's an awesome play place!

Emerson is getting closer and closer to crawling ... She's still very content to sit on her bum and play, but when put on her tummy she's starting to push herself backwards and likes to get her bum way up in the air and bend her right leg up! It looks kinda funny!! She love, love, loves standing and has enjoyed standing at the coffee table, her play table, or whatever we stand her up at for quite some time now. But, recently she's started trying to grab onto things and attempt to pull herself up (she hasn't been successful yet!)! She also is loving pushing her walker around with help from Dad!!! Who knows, maybe she'll take after me and walk and not bother with crawling!? Em is still very chatty and I swear sometimes she is mimicking us. I often think I hear her repeating what I'm saying!? "Hi Dad!" is what she most often repeats! Of course it's not perfectly clear, but definitely sounds close to "Hi Dad!" When we ask her where Blake, Heidi, Jazz, Mom or Dad are she looks right at the appropriate person/animal! And I LOVE reading with her!! She points at things on the pages and sometimes grabs my finger and makes me point to things!! It is soooo... CUTE!! Oh and her clapping ... she loves to clap! As soon as we start singing "If You're Happy and You Know It" she starts clapping!! During Blake's swimming lesson, they started singing that song and Em started clapping!!! I was so surprised! And we love when we sing, "If you're happy and you know say hooray!" And we raise our arms up in the air and she follows!! She's so little and cute, her pudgy arms raised above her head!!! We're hoping she'll be over her cold soon. She had rough nights Tuesday and Wednesday. It was so hard to be up during the night! Emerson has slept 12 hours a night since she was 7 weeks old ... 10 hours at 6 weeks ... so we (well, let's be honest I'VE considering I'm bfing!!!) have been very spoiled with lots of night time sleep. Thank goodness it was only 2 rough nights!!

We hope everyone has a chance to enjoy the wonderful weather this week! We never know when it will take a turn for the worse, so let's enjoy it while we can!! Have a great week everyone :)

Cal, Tracy, Blake and Emerson