A Sister's Smotherly Love

Heather has taken to Finlay since he was born. It has not taken her long to show her love for him either, although sometimes she does get a bit heavy handed when patting him and we find that what starts out to be a gentle pat on the belly, soon becomes heavier and heavier until she is reminded to be gentle again. I often find myself taking a peak at her from the kitchen as she runs up to him as he lies on the floor , and crouches down beside him to give him a kiss and a cuddle . However the kiss is sometimes a full head on head kiss and the cuddles are sometimes full body cuddles ,where she lays herself on his chest. Again I find myself reminding her to be gentle .I don't know if she is aware of how heavy she is or how delicate Finlay is and whether she is testing how heavy she can be , or whether it is "Smotherly love"

Ahhh!!!! peace at last

Fire trucks and ducks

Today I took Heather and Finlay down to Canmore to feed the ducks, The main objective was to get them both out of the house for some fresh air and for Heather to run off some energy. Heather loves the fire trucks and is very aware of where the fire hall is in Canmore.So as we parked up she shouted " nee naws!!!" and wanted to take the detour past the fire hall. So we did, with Heather saying that she was a fireman!!! As we passed the hall the large doors opened up and the large turn table ladder truck pulled out into the parking lot with all lights and horns sounding off. She was so excited that she stopped and was shouting at the truck. You never know, she may follow in the footsteps of her dad.



We then got back on our way to feed the ducks. She loves to walk and run everywhere herself ,so going for a walk takes longer than before , but it is great to see the joy on her face as she runs along the paths, shouting " One, two, three!!,Go" and screaming when she feels the excitement and nervousness of running on the down hill. You never know.....she may even take after her mum and enjoy running!!!!
Who knows what her interests will be and what career she will choose , but watching her grow and develop her own personality is such a rewarding experience.

Yummy !!!

Ha, ha, ha !!!!

He, he, he!!!

" I love food all over Me!!!!! "

Family having fun- day 6 , first picnic

Day six and everything continues to go well. Although it is early days and Finlay tends to sleep most of the time, which makes for a quiet life at the moment. I say, at the moment, because I know that in a few months time, things will be very different. We are still able to give Heather lots of attention at the moment and do the usual things with her, which I am glad about , because it must be a huge transition for her to have a brother, and she is taking it in her stride.



Today we took them both to the river for a little picnic and a walk. Heather had great fun throwing stones and enjoyed being swung out into the water by her dad. She knew the water was cold and refused to straighten her legs when he brought her down. Finlay and I just hung out on the camping mat and he was able to stretch out in the heat under the shade of his mum.

First few days

Heather has adapted extremely well so far and enjoys holding Finlay, talking to him, kissing him, rubbing noses and pointing out his body parts. She often asks him if he is "okay?" in her sweet voice. But she does sometimes treat him like a doll and pushes him away when her hugs are over.She has been very happy and excited about the arrival of her baby and suddenly seems very grown up. We have had a few children visit from Heather's day home and one friend ,Will who is six came to visit.As soon as he arrived at the door, Heather said "Will,sit down....here red chair!!!" Will turned to James ,looked up and said "Oh!! She is already sounding like a big sister.



Finlay has fitted in perfectly to our lives, well we keep forgetting that we have him!!! He sleeps alot and is so quiet.We I'm in the kitchen and Heather goes quiet ,I have to quickly think to myself "where did I put the baby?...Is he safe?" He wakes every 2-3 hours overnight to feed and breast feeding is going well.

Finlay James Gunn 6lb 6oz

Monday 14th July. I was awoken suddenly with a contraction like feeling at 0530hrs. I waited 2 minutes and another contraction occurred.... Here we go... Was this the start of labour ? My water broke and yes it was the start of labour.... we were about to meet our new baby.
James was on a night shift in calgary (1 hr away), and due to finish at 0730hrs , so I thought I would phone him ,let him know that things had started and even suggested that he wait until the end of his shift before coming home!! Thankfully he never listened to me. I had a shower before things became too intense . I remember thinking to myself that it seemed a lot stronger than my labour with Heather and that perhaps time changes your perception of pain. I found I was barely able to do anything, apart from throwing a few things in a bag and lifting Heather from her crib before quickly retreating to the bathroom unable to even get her dressed. She followed me shouting "Mummy? Mummy ?"I remember saying to her "It's okay, Heather, Mum's just having the baby" and then her patting me on the leg.
Thankfully James arrived home at 06.40, got Heather dressed , phoned Nancy the childminder on call to see if we could drop Heather off before leaving, but there was no answer. So Heather came to the hospital with us. We arrived at the hospital at about 0700 my contractions had changed during the car journey and were now one minute apart. I was greeted by my colleagues, who took me straight to the labour and delivery room to check things over...7-8 cm dilated .They called my doctor right away.
By this time Nancy had received her message and called James to say that she would come down to the hospital and pick up Heather. But by now I was having the urge to push, James took Heather out of the room, into the corridor, where one of the admin staff offered to take Heather until Nancy arrived. However by the time James returned (about 5 mins) our baby had been born at 0728 . All I remember thinking was" poor sod, he's missed it ". But to be honest everything went so fast that he probably didn't miss much. Atleast this time he was able to TRIM the chord!!!!


A healthy beautiful baby boy, Finlay James Gunn 6lb 6oz, lots of lovely dark hair. The great thing was that, once I had been cleaned up, Heather was able to come and see her brand new baby brother and the first thing she did was to kiss him.

Nancy arrived with a coffee for James and we chatted for a while, then she took Heather to her house for the morning.
Later that afternoon, James brought Heather back to the hospital and took her to the little shop to choose a gift for her new brother. She went straight up to a wee blue teddy and said " Dat one". She was so excited to visit and sat on the bed to hold Finlay and we all had a big cuddle.

The day before Finlay James Gunn

Sunday 13th july,and James was asked by some friends to go kayaking on the Bow river.I took the opportunity to cycle down with Heather and a friend ,to go and have a picnic by the river and watch Daddy and his friends paddle. We were all organised and my friend arrived ,commenting "this isn't going to bring on labour is it ? I don't want to be delivering a baby down there !!"
We had a lovely morning and then I met James after his kayaking and we all cycled back up the hill to home. I spoke to my mum that afternoon and said that I thought that would be my last trip on my bike for a while.
So the odds were on now ,as to when we were going to have the baby.James thought the 27th July and my parents were edging their bets on the 21st July.......Not even I would have guessed what was in store for the next day....after all I had a list of things to do that included shopping ,an ultra sound scan , a swim and to organise sleeping arrangements if somebody had to come to our house during the night.

Last day of work

I finished work at 23.00 on the 10th July and was looking forward to ten days or so just to get some final things organised , get more food in the freezer and have time to relax and have a few more swims.I found my thoughts falling into the realisation that our life was about to take another substantial change. We had gone from a child free couple to having one .In this case you have never had the experience of having a child and everything about your perspective on life changes .You learn daily about being a parent ,a mother,a father and a partner. How are we going to adapt from having one child to having two ? What is this little person going to be like ? How is it going to fit in with already established family.Is it going to sleep well , or will it cry for the next 3 years ? What temperment will it be ? Spirited, moody, grumpy or angel ? We had adapted well from having no children to having one, better than we had ever imagined , however Heather has been, to us, an angel baby and she really has been a blessing to us and continues to be so.They say you only get one angel...and so far Heather has been ours. The expectation bar has been set extremely high for the next child...poor little thing!! But are we going to be as lucky this time round? ...Hope to God ..Yes....reality ..No !!!
So what is the transition going to hold for us this time .How will it fit into our little family and what is Heather going to make of the new addition ? After all ,she has been our main focus for 22 months now and everything is going to change for her too. Perhaps it is going to be a bigger adaptation for Heather, who has had our full attention , and now there is going to be another little person, who isn't going to leave ?

Bedtime Routine !!!!!

Heather has been a great sleeper for a long time now . Happy to go to bed, able to get herself to sleep and sleeping for 12 hours a night.So much so that if she woke with a bad dream and really needed us in the night , we were able to go in her room lift her up for a minute , then she would want to go back to bed.The routine was bath, milk and stories down stairs , teeth then bed.No quams, no crying, no struggle. However as soon as she hit 22 months things began to change. More stories were wanting to be read, toys being pulled out, fidgetting when being read to and crying when going to bed .
The first time it happened was the night we had changed her crib to a bed as we thought it time , before the new baby comes , and also she was used to a bed for naps at the day home. We had also been to a friends bar-b-q and it was a late night for her .She cried on and off for 2 hours , with us going in to lift her and try to comfort her , but there was no stopping the crying .I mean heart wrenching screaming with her arms tight around your neck , standing at the side of the crib with out stretched arms shouting "mummy ,daddy!! " and loud screaming and shaking the sides, enought o bring a tear to anybody's eye!!!. There was no way this little girl was going to settle by herself. James and I just looked at each other ..it was 11.30 and she was not stopping...we couldn't leave her in the bed like this , as I needed to know she was safe, so he got out the tools and then converted her bed back to the crib. Exhaustion eventually took over ,as we asked her to sit down in the crib ,and she could no longer stay awake. The next few nights were the same, she was getting smarter , saying that she had pooped , just so that I would lift her out of the crib..of course she hadn't pooped at all, wanting to sing " jaque jaque" (freres jaques) etc .This couldn't go on , how would I cope with James on night shift , Heather screaming and having to attend to a new baby....I thought our luck had turned , what had happened to our easy going child.
We put our heads together and agreed that we had to nip this in the bud . So no lifting out the crib, having to leave her to cry for longer periods before going in to her room and gentle reassurance. We both did the same for a few nights , no giving in . The routine was changed ...bath , teeth and 2 stories in her room. It took her by surprise at first , but after 2-3 nights she knows what to expect and she is now back to her little angel self and happy going to bed with no tears and talking to teddy as she used to do.
I don't know if it was the hot weather, the light nights , her testing her boundaries or a bit of everything , but I have spoken to 3 of my friends and they all experienced similar things...must be in the air.
I am so relieved that she is back to her good sleeping pattern ..... however, we still have to change the crib back to a bed.....next job!!!

Summer is here

So the end of June has arrived and we have been thrown into summer overnight with temperatures reaching 30.So now it is time to have fun in the mornings and stay cool in the afternoons.It is always nice to find some water and have the opportunity to cool off and that is what Heather and I did on Saturday.We had a walk down to the river in the morning and she enjoyed playing with the sticks and stones in the water ,looking at the bugs and the birds by the riverbank Then we had a few snacks in the park near by. She enjoyed running around on the grass,running up the hill ,to then run down and fall over.Life is so simple and fun at this age and it is amazing to see the enjoyment she gets from discovering new things and the fun that she gets from running around in bare feet and purposefully falling over to roll in the grass.

New discoverys

So the next day we had Dad take time off because it was too hot for him to be working on the roof and we packed another picnic and set off to cool down in Two Jacks lake in Banff.We took the ball ,bucket and spade and again Heather loved to pick up the rocks to put in her bucket.This time though,she wasn't too keen on paddling too long and was happy to be carried on Dad's shoulders along the shore...looking at the little fish from a height...well atleast Dad was cooling down.Heather certainly knows what she wants and what she wants others to do and has no hesitation in letting you know about it.We all have our special chair around her little table and she will tell you to "sit down ..." and if you don't or are in the middle of doing something ,then she will come and find you to lead you to the chair to sit down with her .She has had many a grown man or lady sitting on her little table and chairs...funny what a small person can make you do.We had a great laugh at the following video of Heather putting James in his place....





He is beginning to realise that there is now more than one female in the house.....what on earth will it be like if the next one is a girl too!!!! I'm wondering what he is hoping for!!!

A LITTLE BALANCE , MAYBE !!!

The Girls Of The House..he,he,he!!!!!