Monday, August 8, 2011

Way below average...

I took the girls for their doctors appointments--Rose's 15 month, and Paige's yearly checkup. Normally a 15 month visit isn't required, but our doctor wanted to check how Rose was growing as last time she had dropped in her growth curve.

I forgot to post Rose's 12 month stats which were:

28.3 inches
20.28 lbs

At this visit, Rose was:

28.74 inches
20.35 lbs

Not too much growth in the past 3 months.

Paige was:

32 lbs,
36.5 inches

Last year she was 35" and 28 lbs. Seems like maybe she's filling out before growing up!

Anyway, the girls are both smaller than average...way smaller. Paige is under the 3rd percentile for height and Rose is at the 6th percentile for height. My family is very small so it makes sense to me. The doctor wants to recheck them again though since they are still dropping in their growth curves rather than continuing on in the same percentile. We'll go back in 3-6 months. What we're most concerned about is Paige reaching 40 inches--this opens up a few more rides at Disney for us to go on, namely "Dinosaur"!

At the same appointment, Rose got her chickenpox vaccine and Paige got her 4 year vaccine (don't even know what it was for to be honest). Both girls cried a bit, and it really affected Paige the next day...she was fevery, tired, and had no appetite. So far Rose has been fine, but they mentioned that she could break out in some spots in a weeks time, but that it would be normal.

The doctor also found a heart murmur when listening to Paige's heart. She gave me a requisition for further testing at the hospital--an "echocardiograph" which takes an ultrasound of the heart to ensure that it is developing properly. She told me that I probably shouldn't worry as this is common and most usually nothing to be concerned about. The test is scheduled for the 18th, and luckily she is over 3 and therefore won't have to be sedated.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Back in St. A

After spending what felt like hours gathering up toys and crafts and food that was strewn all throughout the hotel room, we made the journey home to St. Albert...no coffee for the long journey, that's for sure. We saw an elk again on the way home. This picture is from the way up though. Mike's iPad really comes in handy for long trips...we discovered this on the way up to Jasper. After Rose has a nap we wedge the iPad in between the 2 front seats and put a movie on. They usually watch Despicable Me, which they've seen about 10 times now.

The following week was a work week for everyone, so it was pretty quiet around the house as everyone left and Lizzy went to daycare. Mike worked from Jen's house, although I don't know if he was working hard or hardly working. He spent a lot of time going to the gym. Good for him to just relax. I was able to visit with some friends, although it didn't feel like I had enough time with anyone. I saw Janice, Lisa, Erin, and Andrea. Great visits, and can't wait for more time next year. As a family we also went to Marilyn and Hal's house for a fun BBQ. Great to see the newlyweds Cam and Lana there too, whose wedding we had missed while we were at Matt's.

As Paige looooves "Auntie Booze's ride place" we went back for some more fun, bringing Uncle Tyson along. People think this picture is set up but she actually went on it. I included the video so you can see that it's not that crazy.







Here's Rose watching a show in bed while she was waiting for me to put her to sleep:

As usual there was a Turcsanyi potluck dinner. This time it was on the last night we were there as a bunch of the family had just come back from Hungary.

Here are Mike's second cousins Bailey, Riley, and Bella:



Avie had sure grown since last year. She wasn't crawling last year and now she's almost as big as Paige!
Here's Paige's 3rd cousin Ciara (I don't know the spelling I'm sorry!). Paige and her have the exact same birthday, and are the same age. they had fun playing with Paige's toys.
Mike's cousin Melissa:Mike's pregnant cousin Amanda, mom of big-girl Avie:So happy that everyone made it out for the dinner as I'm sure lots of them were still jet lagged. Auntie Sue and Auntie Judy brought back Hungarian dolls for the girls and Paprika for us.

Rose and Lizzy pose for the camera in their final moments together before we went home. The girls didn't play together really, as they don't at this age, but Rose learned a bit of sign language from Lizzy. Lizzy does the sign for "more", and Rose started to copy her and say "muh muh" while doing the sign. She did it at home for about a week and then stopped.

One final kiss for Abby:The face Lizzy makes when you tell her to give someone a kiss:

An awesome meltdown:




So fun in St. Albert. We also went to the Farmer's Market where Grandma Val bought Paige another painted rock and hair clip. I bought some chocolate bar stuffed brownies. Major yum!



Looking forward to next year already! Maybe the mosquitos will be better though, that really sucked! No pun intended.


Jasper Part 2: Matt's wedding

Matt's wedding was on July 16. The ceremony was at Maligne Lookout (not on Maligne Lake as numerous people assumed because of the name). The weather was beautiful that day and my fears of the girls freezing were calmed when the sun came out that morning.

I have a lot of pictures of Tyson and Rose. He held her for the ceremony and she was so good and calm and looked like she would fall asleep:

Grandma Val and Tyson with Paige and Rose:

Auntie Booze and Rose. Rose had an early early nap as she woke up super early. This made it possible for me to come to the ceremony--she would otherwise have been sleeping. James was back at the hotel with a napping Elizabeth.


Matt waiting for the big moment.





One blurry photo of the vows. All of the guests stood for the ceremony. We were near the back and I was having a hard time seeing, not to mention scoping out an opening for a photo. And our camera is loud.

Since Rose napped early I assumed she would have a double nap and be good to go in the evening. It was a win-win!! Too bad--it didn't work and instead she was a disaster. Here she is in the beginning of the evening before she spotted Daddy, AKA "Mommy" sitting at the head table. After that it was game over.

Not a great picture, but reminded me that at Paige's place at the table, along with all of the other kids, there were little gift packs with crayons, stickers, glow sticks and toys. This was awesome and Paige loved it.

Lizzy was melting down too:



Tyson doing "Le Tigre". We make him do this pose at weddings:


Our table chowing down. Luckily they let us go to the buffet early in the proceedings before the babies had a complete meltdown. Zaida Bruce brought Paige and Rose mounds of dessert. Hey, whatever keeps them busy at this point.



When Rose had reached her boiling point, somewhere in the middle of the speeches, and Paige was saying "I'm so tired and I'm not even sleeping", I took them back to the hotel for the night (8:30). After putting them both to bed I was exhausted. It was a long day not having Mike with me, not to mention the fact that Rose didn't nap past 11:00am. I had taken them to the town to look around in the middle of the day as well, so it was a busy day. Jen and I felt ripped off since she had to take Lizzy back too, but our hotel rooms weren't close enough to use a monitor or anything.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Jasper Part 1

A few days into our vacation we loaded up everyone into 2 of the Pugsleys vehicles and took a long drive to Jasper. It's probably about the same amount of time as driving to the cottage minus the traffic jams. So 4 hours straight rather than 4 hours up to the cottage including slow traffic and stopping. The other major difference is that there are literally no rest stops for hours. We are accustomed to available rest stops at least every 30 minutes. So on the way to Jasper when Paige had to pee "so super bad" she had to hold it for a long time. (On the way home a similar "so super bad" episode occured and we tried to pull off the road where she refused to go--she could hold it a bit longer). There was literally no where to stop from Edmonton to about Hinton, which was at least 1.5 hours. Like literally nothing...not a Tim Horton's or even a gas station in sight. Luckily we hadn't stopped for our usual long-drive coffee.

While Jen and I were booking our hotel for Jasper we soon realized that dreams of a big family cabin were squashed by our late booking. Instead we settled for us Turcsanyi's booking a suite at a basic hotel with a full kitchen in it. That way we could conveniently eat meals in our room without having to eat out, and all of the other people (Val, Bruce, Tyson, Jen, James, and Elizabeth) could congregate in our room too.

There was a chess table in our room which quickly became a craft station:





We had a gigantic sauna in our room which we never used:



Paige slept in the bedroom with the king bed. We would have taken this room but Rose's playpen that the hotel gave us was a large square and didn't fit in the room.
Paige was mad because we told her she could have the room with the 2 Queen beds. When we told her she would have to sleep in the King size while Mommy and Daddy shared a room with Rose she made this sign and stuck it up on the door of her preferred room with a sticker. It is a sign indicating it is Paige's room and the X means "No Rosie's allowed":



Paige running around in the room:
Rose and Lizzy playing in Paige's toy suitcase:
On Friday, the day before the wedding, we had a full day to sight see. We decided to go to Jasper's most popular summer attraction, the Jasper Tramway (a tram car ride to the top of a mountain). After driving way out of the way (yet seeing a bear) and turning around, we found the attraction was not very busy as it was cold (about 10 degrees!). We weren't dressed very warmly and they told us the temperature would be 3 degrees on top of the mountain. Paige and Rose got bundled up as much as possible, and Rose is the proud owner of some new Jasper socks. Mike is the proud owner of a new Canada sweatshirt.
The girls had an apple while we waited for our departure time:
Paige was freezing:
When we got to the top it was FREEZING!!!! There was a small loop around the tram building where you could look at the views and take pictures. We took a very fast whip around, took a couple pictures and then bolted into the restaurant:Mike enjoyed a wine, and the rest of us had water:The town of Jasper down below:MMmmm....piping hot poutine!! Can't believe that piping hot anything would be welcome in July, but alas it felt just like early Winter up there. On the journey back down the tram. As there was no scheduled departure time, it was less busy in the tram and Paige got the prime spot right up front. "Everyone down there looks like ants!" she kept saying. Rose liked to feed Lizzy food all the time:

While we were at the Tram, the Pugsley's went for a boat cruise. We couldn't coordinate the girls schedules to be able to all sightsee together. Such is life with 3 young kids I guess. In the afternoon the rest of the gang arrived and checked into the hotel. Mike had a rehersal dinner to attend but Val and Bruce came to my room and cooked dinner for the whole family! Yum! Since Mike was out late that night (and the other nights too with wedding obligations) it was nice to have the girls confined to bedrooms so I could just watch tv, read and eat our vacation late night staple--peanut M&M's.