It's now August and Olivia is almost a year old!! Yes, a year! Now I totally understand that saying “Time flies fast when you're having fun” or, “Enjoy your kids now they grow up fast!”. Totally true with Olivia.
Olivia has come a long way since my last post update (which I believe was February for Valentines Day). Speaking of 14, she has finally hit the 14 pound mark! That's 14 times her birth weight! It may have taken Olivia a year to hit that mark but she's thriving! Not only has she gained weight she is finally crawling around the house and making me run! I can no longer leave her on her mat as she'll be at the patio door trying to get to Tucker who sleeps on the patio during the day. She LOVES Tucker. Tucker and Olivia are good friends.
Also, since the last blog, we've went on two family vacations (one to Ucluelet/Tofino for a week and then to Whistler at the beginning of July). Out of those two vacations Ucluelet was the better one hands down! We ended up booking our Whistler trip one week too late! We were there when the horrible fires were burning up in Pemberton. It was AWEFUL! The smoke was so disgusting, the skies were like Sepia (we joked about spending our time in Whistler during Sepia Days! No joke! It looked like a Sepia photograph!).
Well, the last night we were there we ended up calling 9-11 due to Olivia having a bit of trouble breathing and gasping sometimes. Was a bit of a scary moment for us. She was fine when we held her but soon as she was put down she panicked and started crying and gasping.
Thank goodness the ambulance came quickly and the medical clinic was 2 blocks away and was open! This may sound strange but when the medics came, they put her on the stretcher and she looked so cute!!! They had an infant attachment so she could be strapped in. She was just sitting there relaxing playing with the straps of the stretcher, haha! She was perfectly content. We still wanted to take her in to be seen just to be sure.
Arrived at the “hospital” where she was seen. Course she didnt have any problematic breathing episodes and smiled at everyone who came to see her. I decided to wait for a bit and see if she'd have another episode. This was at 11pm at night too! She was sleepy at this point so I laid her flat (as this is what caused it the first time) and low and behold, she had another panick/crying/breathing attack. Doctors came and took at look at her and decided she had a bit of CROUP which is an infant form of laryngitis which can cause some breathing problems sometimes. The cause isn't really know as it could have been a coincidence and gotten it from somewhere or it could have been from the smoke (my vote). At any rate, they gave her some steriods to help with the breathing and opening of her airway and sent us back to our hotel. This was our last night in Whistler so that was good. We probably would have gone home the next day anyways if this wasn't our last night.
She was fine the rest of the night.
Next morning we packed up and headed home. Long story short, it was a LONG ways home. There was a serious motorcycle accident on the sea to sky highway which delayed us a few hours! There were people taking photos of the view of the water as well as somebody pulling out their bbq and giving out hot dogs on the highway! Entertaining to say the least.
We finally got home around 6pm that evening to Victoria where I wanted to take Olivia to the ER one more time as she was still having a bit of breathing problems. I wanted to be sure everything was okay. After a couple hours of waiting we were sent home with nothing. She seemed okay. I felt better. Call me an over protective mother but you never know, and with her having CLD (Chronic Lung Disease) I didn't want to risk anything. I think I made the right choice.
Olivia recovered fully the next day and seemed fine so Im pretty much set on the cause of all this was the smoke. Note to self “next time there's smoke around, don't bring Olivia!”.
How's this for a change in topic?
Olivia loves eating solids! Yup, that's right, solids! She started a couple of months ago and has expanded her food likes a lot! So far she loves bananas, pears, apples, potato, yams, rice cereal, baby oatmeal and loves her baby Mum Mums! She's so funny when she eats as she gets SUPER excited when she sees the food and panics! Haha! She can't get it fast enough! She sure does have a great appetite! She's still on formula and breastmilk though as we're still trying to get her to gain the weight.
For Olivia's first birthday I'm planning to have it at this winery that I love playing at at weddings. I still need to book that (Better get going!!) or, that plan may change, I still haven't really decided to be honest. I better get going on that I suppose.
Okay, this is perfect. I love when I'm writing and one things transitions perfectly onto the next paragraph! I wish this would have happened in high school or university when I was writing those horrid essays! That was the most challenging part for me when writing essays; tying thoughts together to make one nice coherent essay.
Now before I begin, I'd like to say one thing! This is not an obligation on your behave! You'll understand once I write it out below.
Since it's been almost a year since Olivia's stay at the NICU I wanted to give back somehow to them. I had been thinking a long time on how I can do this and have concluded on this:
I have decided to donate to two causes:
NICU and Locks of Love
I don't really need to explain too much about the NICU but the Locks of Love is an organization that is in the United States as well as Canada that donate hair/and money to children who have had hair lost due to a long term illness or cancer. I have not cut my hair in about a year and half or even longer so I have plenty of hair. (Shall I explain why this past year I haven't cut my hair yet? Been a bit busy:) ). So, I decided, instead of just cutting my hair off and letting it go to waste I'd donate it to somebody who needs it.
So how it works, I've set up a gofundme page and my goal is $1000 to be raised to the NICU. Every $100 raise will equal 1 inch of hair being cut. (and no, I'm not cutting more than 10 inches!).
If you feel like you can support me in this cause you can do so by going to:
www.gofundme.com/oliviajanesiemens
Again, please don't feel obligated to donate, only if you would like!:)
I think that about sums up the fun stuff that's been going on! I could go on and on but only choose a few things to reminisce. Before I sign off here I'll attach a few more photos of the past few months (in no particular order). I'll try to update a bit more often so I don't have to cram so much into a blog. I hope this blog brings you up to date and that you're all having a great summer! Thanks for reading and following everyone!