Julia and Emily's World

Tonight Aunt Pat treated us to a nice dinner at Kelsey's. This is Aunt Pat's last night with us. It was fun having her here for a visit. On Thursday she is heading home to New Zealand. In December her daughter Jacquie will be visiting from New Zealand with her fiance Roland. We are looking forward to seeing them. Julia has never met her long distance cousin.

Today was Julia's first day in her new room at school. She was very excited when we got there. It was "Bye Bye Daddy!" as soon as she was ready to explore. This room is very big considering that there are only 7 toddlers in the class. There is a large climber, lots of play areas and real toilets. No more diaper change tables and no more sleeping room. All the toddlers sleep in the room on portable cots which they set up during nap time. The yard is also bigger. It has a large outdoor climber, a sand pit, a little bridge to walk over, picnic tables and a vegetable garden to tend to. Julia is loving it!

Today Julia went to the doctor's with Mommy for her 18 month check-up (new height and weight posted). Along for the ride was Aunt Pat. They arrived early (1.5 hours early) so they had lunch first at the hospital cafeteria. This cafeteria had a large aquarium and birds so Julia had fun. At the doctor's office Julia was very nervous as usual. This time she had reason to be a bit nervous because she had to get 2 needles, one in each arm. I had the afternoon off to set a court date for my ticket. It took a lot less time than I though so I had a couple of unexpected hours free. I took advantage of the time by taking Julia to the park. She is getting a lot more brave. I had to stop her a couple of times from going down the slide by herself because I didn't have anyone with me to catch her at the bottom. She's still not crazy about the swings. Aunt Pat brought a nice pink Dora outfit and a cute hairy frog that Julia loved (see pictures). Julia had SOME success on the...

Today was Mya's birthday party (I forgot my camera so no pictures. Lots of pictures on Selena and Mya's blog though). Julia had a lot of fun with all her cousins, even Nathan! At first she was very nervous will all the people there but once she warmed up to everyone she started to have fun. Mya's cousin Jenna was there too. Jenna and Julia interacted quite frequently. Usually they were fighting over toys. At one point Jenna had baby's head and Julia had baby's feet and they were both pulling and both yelling. Julia was quite stressed. After the party we dropped by Louise's place to pick up Aunt Pat. Aunt Pat will be staying with us for a couple of nights. Julia looks to be quite comfortable with Aunt Pat so far. They will be spending a lot of time together tomorrow so I'm sure that they will be best friends by tomorrow afternoon. Losing the soother hasn't been easy. She hasn't had a full night without it yet. I think we'll just hav...

After starting potty training, Julia was ready to tackle something a little more challenging...losing the soother. I was expecting this to be a tough battle but step one went off without incident. Tonight Julia went to bed without her soother. She asked for it, didn't get it and she still went to sleep. It's been 3 hours and so far so good. We'll see if she gets through the night. What a big week! First the potty now the soother. Maybe next week we'll find her a part time job. I heard Dairy Queen is hiring. Here are a few pictures of Julia playing outside with our neighbours Danny and Nicky.

OK, I now have actual physical evidence. Julia pee'd in her potty at home today! Sheryl put her on it before dinner and right away she went. It's been a good (and surprising) start to potty training this week. I think that is enough potty talk for this week. Next week Julia moves into a new room at daycare. I took a peek today with Julia. I think she will like the change. There is a bigger jungle gym in the room, toilets, and even a bird. Although I'm not sure if the bird is staying with the current class or the room. There will be 7 toddlers in the room, one more than right now, with the same 3 care workers. It's a large room for 7. It is meant for around 10 at least. I'll post some pictures of the room once she gets in there.

OK, I'm going to stick to this weeks potty theme. Today she tried out her potty at home. I really thought that she wanted to use it because she was saying "potty! potty!" and headed upstairs to her potty. When we got there it looked like she just wanted to play with it as you can see by the pictures. We did put her on it but she didn't do anything. She did however have some success with the potty at daycare again. Papere and Grandma are at home now. This visit flew by. I can't believe that their 2 weeks went by already. Julia again was calling for "Papa" as soon as she got home. She as actually yelling "PAPA!". They will be back soon so I don't think she'll forget them this time around.

We'll she did it again. Pee on the potty today. Maybe she's ready for it which would be nice. There would be no more diaper changes, rashes, fighting on the change table. I guess we have to take it day by day and see how this goes. Tonight was the last night Papere and Grandma were in town. They leave in the morning. Unfortunately for Julia they were out in Toronto for the evening and came home after she was already in bed. Julia was calling for "Papa" on the way home and also when she got home. She was upset that he wasn't around. She's going to miss them. We went to Swiss Chalet for dinner. The food took a long time and Julia was getting restless there. We had to eat quickly and scram.

Well wasn't I surprised to be told today that Julia used the potty at daycare. They put her on it 3 times and guess what...2 pees and a poop (or "BM" as they like to call it at daycare). Before I get too excited, this was the first time they put her on it so we'll see if she has a repeat performance. There are older toddlers in the class who are potty training so maybe she has picked it up by copying the others. Anyways, they will keep trying with her to see what happens. She's a bit young for it (she just turned 18 months) so they don't know if she is really ready. If they could potty train her then it is worth every penny sending her to daycare! Julia will be moving into a new room at the end of the month and this room has mini toilets. This will be ideal if she is ready to start potty training. We ran out and got her a potty tonight because she was sitting on the bathroom scale at bath time saying "potty!". I don't want her to have a...

This morning Julia went with her grandparents to church. She was a very good girl I was told. In the afternoon we all went to Wendy's/Tim Horton's for one of Julia's favourite foods...French Fries! She loves them. She better enjoy the junk food while she can because once her grandparents leave on Wednesday there won't be daily donuts and fries anymore (I'll miss those treats too). After Wendy's Julia went with them to look at a house for sale. I got a lot of play time in with Julia today which was nice. Tomorrow it is back to work and back to daycare. I'm sure she will be crying tomorrow when I drop her off. She hasn't been there since Wednesday morning.

Yesterday was Ron and Julianne's wedding. It was certainly a memorable one. Rain, storm, floods...it's amazing that it went so well. Sheryl and I were very honoured to be participants...I was a groomsman and Sheryl did a reading at the church. Congratulations Ron and Julianne! Julia stayed home with her grandparents and had a great day with them. The past two weeks have been very busy for us and unfortunately this has taken a lot of time away from being with Julia. I expect things to get back to normal now so I look forward to falling back into our regular routine. It has certainly been tougher to leave Julia at home while attending to other functions than I thought it would be. We are very fortunate that she has bonded so well with her visiting grandparents ("Papa" and "Mama" as Julia would say).

Today I took the afternoon off to do some essential errands...visit Golf Town and Future Shop (I bought shoes and a bag). I picked up Julia at 12:15pm. This is usually her nap time so she was a bit grumpy. Her classmates were all sleeping and she wanted to sleep too. As soon as she got in the car she fell asleep. Julia spent the afternoon with Grandma and Papere. They went for a walk in the stroller and then went to Tim Horton's for coffee to see all the old folks. After dinner they went for another walk while I went downtown to pick up Sheryl and go to Ron/Julianne's wedding rehearsal. After the rehearsal we went to a Japanese restaurant in the beaches...Ron's dad's treat. It was very good. Meanwhile, Papere put Julia to bed. Julia has really grown attached to her grandfather which is nice to see (and surprising!). I got a speeding ticket this morning trying to get Sheryl to the GoTrain on time. I got up a bit late so we were running behind schedule. Not ha...

Today was Julia's first day back at daycare since her successful operation. We still don't have the proper ear protection that Julia is to wear around water so Julia will have to sit out of water play for a couple of days. We do have silicone earplugs that Julia wears during her bath. She doesn't seem to mind them and realizes that she must wear them in the bath. Meanwhile Grandma, Papere, and Louise went shopping. Tomorrow Sheryl and I will be going shopping so the gang is going to pick up Julia from daycare and take her out to dinner.

Today was a big day. First Julia, Grandma, Papere, and Sheryl went to church in the morning. Julia wore her new dress. However, they couldn't stay until the end of mass because Julia filled her diaper before they had a chance to fill the collection plate. Later in the afternoon everyone came for a visit. Every grandparent, uncle, aunt and cousin was here. All the cousins had a great time. There was lots of food, lots of laughter, lots of crying (except for Selena) and lots of noise. In a few months Nathan will be able to join in as well. It won't be long before he's knocking Julia around too.

Julia's surgery to get her ear tubes went very smoothly today. We arrived at the hospital at 6:30am to check in. Julia was fine at this point. She was aware that this was not her regular routine but was relatively calm. Her first freak-out was when she was getting her pre-operation examination...blood pressure, weighing. I was blowing bubbles to try to distract her. That didn't work but the examination was quick. At 7:45am we made our way down to the operating area. Only one person could go into the recovery room so Sheryl went in. Surgery was at 8:15am. They wheeled Julia away and she was crying very hard. For the operation, Julia was sedated. The operation took around 15 minutes. By the time they wheeled her out she as awake and SCREAMING! She was MAD! She showed very little signs of the sedation and was fairly alert. Before long she was eating cookies and a freezee. By 10am she was released from the hospital. At home she had a very normal day with no signs ...