Pictures and Videos

Really just a media update today - I wanted to get caught up on photos and videos before it got out of hand again, and also before our big trip!  We leave on Friday for Canada - a week in Brampton, a week in Ottawa, and a few days in Montreal for Auntie Catherine's wedding. 



Things are going well here.  Julian is now four months old and growing every day.  He is very active, alert, and talkative.  He is still doing physical therapy, however, he has made great progress and we are pleased with his improvement.  Theodore is also well, adding new words to his vocabulary very quickly these days, such as a word or approximation for the numbers 1 to 10.  We also just finished a 10 week music class.  While Julian just looked around a lot, Theodore really absorbed the class and learned quite a bit!  We also made a new friend at class and are having a second playdate with them today.

Okay, here's the pictures and videos.  Will update again after our trip! Have a nice June!



Julian talking last week:


Theodore dancing (and singing a little, too):

Update

I'm very behind on updating this blog - apologies! Life, as you can imagine, has been busy, plus due to my own incompetence I've gone through several phones recently, and have had to dig them all out to import and sort photos. Anyway, let's get to it!



Julian is now three months old. He is a truly wonderful baby. Overall he has a very chill personality, and loves to smile and laugh. He will hang out contentedly on his mat or in his swing, which is a nice change from Teddy's more high needs infancy. He loves his big brother and enjoys watching him. He is also a dedicated thumb sucker, which amuses his big brother to no end! He nurses well, and is gaining weight well. At 3 months he weighed in at 11 and a half pounds. As I mentioned previously, he had to re-do his newborn hearing screen, and he passed with no problems.

We have been dealing with one small issue however - he has mild torticollis, which means that he doesn't have the full range of motion in his neck/head on one side - in his case, his left. It is not severe, though because he tilts to and favours the one side, when lying down pressure on his head is not evenly distributed, and so his head shape is a little lopsided. We decided to pursue physical therapy to be proactive about the issue, and because we have a relationship already with Teddy's former therapist who we love and trust. We have had four sessions, and definitely the head shape is improving and we are working on stretching and strengthening the neck muscles. Unfortunately, Julian rather hates the therapy, to put it nicely, though at his latest session he enjoyed himself for 20 minutes before realizing he was supposed to be angry about us manipulating him! We will probably go for only a short while, so it's not a long-term problem.



Theodore is now 2.5 years old. He celebrated his half birthday in March with cake and some new trains! He is really blossoming and doing very well. He graduated from physical therapy in March, though in reality had not needed it for a while, but we love his therapist and he had so much fun we thought we would keep on. He runs, (almost) jumps, dances, and loves to kick his soccer ball around. He has really built muscle strength and loves to move his body, which is wonderful to see. He is still attending speech therapy, though only once a week at this time for scheduling reasons. While he still has a pretty severe delay he is making progress. He has several new words since I last wrote, and also is signing words very consistently and using these words and signs to truly communicate with us. For example, he will regularly sign "eat" when he is hungry, and when he goes on outings he comes home and tells us via signs and words that he saw trains, birds, etc. He has a word for all the colours and enjoys using those in particular, and is especially proud of his "bus", which is extremely clear and said often, with pride! He continues to love his trains and books most of all his toys, though he also enjoys art, playing outside, and music. He has started taking on chores around the house and really likes being a big boy who helps out: he will put away the cutlery from the dishwasher, throw things out in the garbage, and put dirty laundry in the basket. He is a funny, sweet kid, and while he can be stubborn and mercurial (hey, he's two!) we really enjoy him and his personality.



The transition to two children has been going quite well. Theodore is, in general, pleased with his baby brother. There are definitely challenging moments, but those are usually resolved with snuggling up on the couch with a Thomas the Tank Engine video while I nurse the baby. He really enjoys lying next to Julian on his mat and holding his hand and looking at him. We still try to do lots of outings, and are currently enrolled in a Music Together class, which was appealling because I was able to bring both Julian and Theodore. Theodore loves the class and we all have a lot of fun at it every week, and listening to the CD at home!

To help me out during the day, we have hired a nanny, Myisha. She comes twice a week, currently on Wednesdays and Thursdays, from 8 to 5. She takes Theodore to his speech therapy which is a big help for me, and does activities, outings, and lunches and nap time. She will also watch Julian so I can shower and nap! She is a very fun young woman and Theodore really enjoys spending time with her, which is great.

Other than those sorts of updates, life continues on daily. Billy was able to stay home from work for one month after Julian's birth, which was wonderful. After that, my parents came to stay for two weeks to help out. We definitely appreciated that! Since then we also had a short visit from one of my oldest friends, Nigel, and have had various friends over for visits. In June, we will be travelling to Canada for three weeks, going to Brampton, Ottawa, and then Montreal for Billy's sister Catherine's wedding. It will be Julian's first trip!

Time to finish this update and post it, finally! A huge slideshow follows - all of February, March, and most of April. I also have one short video of Julian from March. Hopefully in the future I will update more frequently and then the photo albums will be less epic!

Photos:


Chit-chat in March:

Julian Emmanuel Biggs is here!

Theodore's baby brother Julian was born on Friday, January 27th at 11:18pm. He weighed 7lb 3oz, and was 20" long.



So far everything has been going very well. Julian is a good nurser and has an easy-going personality. He had his first check-up yesterday morning. He had dropped to 6lb 10oz in the hospital (normal amount of loss) but had already gone back up to 6lb 14oz yesterday. He's a lovely pink with no hint of jaundice. The only issue to date is that he didn't pass the newborn hearing screening on his left ear, but we've been told that is very common. We'll be going in for a follow-up screening in two weeks and I will post about the results at that time.

Theodore is pretty calm about the whole change in having a baby around the house so far. He did wonderfully with our (amazing!) friends from Halflab who came to stay with him over the weekend while I was in the hospital, and has been pretty chill about things since Julian came home. We are lucky that he is so good about it all!



We are all, obviously, tired, but doing well. The birth was uncomplicated and we were discharged Sunday morning. Billy is on paternity leave for a month or so, which is wonderful. I will try to update again soon, but for now here are photos from the first 5 days of Julian's life.

Catch-Up Photo Post

With the new baby extremely imminent (due in 3 days!) I thought I would try to sneak in a small photo update here. While I've posted pictures from Paris, Brampton, and Theodore's second birthday, there are obviously lots of other pictures from that time period that I haven't put up. So this post is to link to a collection of photos from August 2011 through the end of December 2011, including Christmas photos.

Quick notes on Theodore: he is now 28 months old, and doing great. His speech is really improving - he has a sound or sign for tons of different animals, and a 'word' for most colours. He is willing to try new sounds out, and definitely now says 'cat', 'da-da', and 'ma-ma' very clearly. His other reliable words are 'ba' for bus and 'uck' for truck. He still uses his signs as well, especially for milk and train. Trains continue to be a huge hit in this house! We continue to do speech therapy twice a week, and he enjoys it. We are also still doing physical therapy once a week, though he doesn't actually qualify for it any more - but the insurance keeps paying and we adore Jyoti, our therapist, so we keep going! He does still have lower muscle tone than other children his age, but otherwise he is generally at age-level and in particular has shown no ill-effects from his foot anomaly so far.


Enjoying physical therapy back in August.

He is very interested in his baby brother - he loves to pat my tummy and snuggle up to it, and pat my breasts where baby brother will get his milk. We will see how he feels when a real, live baby is in the house, but so far we have read and talked about it a lot, and he seems very excited! He is still such a sweet child - he definitely has developed opinions and can be contrary and stubborn, but overall he is easy-going and a delight to be around.

When the new baby arrives, I will hopefully continue to update about both boys here on this blog!

Here are the photos; I haven't uploaded any videos lately, but hopefully will catch up on that soon. Just getting through five months of photos was work enough!

Second Birthday Pictures

I'm still very woefully behind on this blog, but here's a mini-update with pictures from Theodore's second birthday in September.



We opened presents the morning of his actual birthday. They were almost exclusively train-related and he was thrilled! Theodore is still completely in love with Thomas the Tank Engine and trains in general.

Later that morning we went to the Palo Alto Junior Zoo and Museum and met Talia and Beti. It's a cute little zoo and play area that Teddy loves, and they had a fun time running around together and looking at the animals.



We saw Talia again on the morning of the 10th when we held his birthday party in our backyard. We had bubbles and cupcakes, which went over very well! We kept everything low-key because he was only turning two and isn't a fan of big, noisy events anyway, and it turned out great.

Theodore also had a two-year checkup with his pediatrician in that time, and everything looked great. He's around the 10th to 15th percentile for height (it's hard to measure a screaming, flailing child!) and just under the 3rd percentile for weight. It was exciting to have him on the charts, and he's got a lovely growth curve that just happens to be on a lower part of the chart than average. He's very healthy overall and so we were pleased! We have been discharged from seeing the GI doctor further, and also met with Endocrinology in December and were told not to worry there either. So he's officially a small child that takes after his father - which is fine by us, because he's so happy, healthy, and smart.

Here are the rest of the photos from his birthday - just 14 of them - and hopefully soon I will post more catch-up photos and news, unless his Baby Brother arrives in the meantime!

Brampton report

Slowly working my way up to the present. At the end of August, Theodore and I took a 5 day trip to Brampton on our own, while Billy stayed home to work. The flights were definitely challenging - Theodore didn't nap on the way there, and threw several epic tantrums going both ways - but it was worth the trouble in the end, as it was great to see all of my family.



Theodore had a really good time, though unfortunately he was battling a cold and a cough. In particular, he loved spending time with his cousins Austin (age 5) and Alex (age 3). He wanted to do everything Austin did and looked up to him a lot. We were able to spend three of the four full days we were there with his cousins and Auntie Debbie, which was wonderful. They came to Brampton twice, and one day we went down to their house in Toronto to visit with them. Auntie Suzie also visited each of those days, so I got lots of sister-time and Theodore got spoiled by his aunties!



A highlight of the trip for me was taking Theodore to visit his Great-Grandma Peggy, who is his only living great-grandparent. She just turned 97 years old, and is living in a facility in Shelburne, 45 minutes north of Brampton. She is suffering from advanced Alzheimer's, but still really enjoyed our visit while we were there. I know Theodore won't remember the visit, but I'm glad to have photos to remind him of it in the future. While she is in great physical health you can never count on more time at her age.

In general, it was a nice, low-key trip. We didn't travel to see friends, and while there were many people I would have liked to see, it was much easier this way. We hadn't seen Debbie or Theodore's cousins since last Christmas, and will not be travelling this Christmas, so it was good to just spend lots of quality time with them. Though next time, I think I would think twice about flying alone!

That catches me up on our two trips of the summer. I'll end with one video and photos, as always. On another note, I'm sure this isn't a surprise to anyone reading this blog, but just in case it is, I forgot to mention here that I'm pregnant again and we're expecting baby #2, another boy, at the end of January. It's fairly obvious in the photo above, so thought I should make it explicit! We're very excited and Theodore likes the idea of his baby brother being in my tummy. Everything is going very smoothly this time around; I'm being closely monitored but so far we seem to be in the clear as regards complications. Fingers crossed for the rest of the pregnancy!

Theodore enthusiastically copying his cousin Austin:


Photos:

Paris report

Well, I'm so far behind at this point that catching up seems daunting - so I thought I would break the summer down into separate posts to make it more manageable. I'll start with our fabulous trip to Paris!



10+ hour flights with a toddler are definitely not a breeze, but Theodore really rose to the challenge. He slept half the flight there (an overnight) and at least took a nap on the way back. We had direct flights and bought him his own seat - best money we ever spent.

Our apartment was in a great location in Le Marais, near many great shops, restaurants, parks, and the Metro. The four flights of stairs (no elevator) were a challenge, but the apartment had two floors, was bright and airy, and extremely spacious. We were all very comfortable there for our stay. Theodore certainly had no complaints!



Billy worked for most of the vacation from the Paris office, though he would usually go in a little later so that we could all leave the house together (aka he could help me with Teddy + stairs), and he would leave quite early to meet us at the park and go to dinner. We did do some "big" tourist outings on weekends and one weekday morning: we saw Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, and spent an hour and a half at the Louvre (not bad with a toddler in tow!) During the week Theodore and I would go do one touristy and/or kid-friendly activity in the morning, come home for nap, and then usually go to the park in the afternoon. There were several beautiful, fun parks close to our apartment, which was wonderful. As morning outings we went to a small zoo, the Tuileries, the science museum, Place des Vosges, the Middle Ages museum, etc.

While it took a few days to settle in because of the time change, Theodore really had a fabulous time. Paris is a toddler's delight! There were lots of cars, motorcycles, dogs, frites and pain au chocolat, and best of all, birds. He chased the pigeons in the park every day, and could do so for an hour or more at a time! It was great fun to watch him laugh and run, and as a bonus, it really improved his footwork and agility - Jyoti, his physical therapist, was blown away by the advancement in his skills when we got back.



We also had the pleasure of a nice visit from Billy's sister, Theodore's Auntie Diana. She stayed with us for the second week we were there, and Theodore really enjoyed her company. She helped us manage that hour and a half at the Louvre in particular, and also babysat one night so Billy and I could have a date night! Much appreciated, and it was really nice to spend time with her.



Billy also had his first night alone with Theodore - I went to London for one night to visit a friend. I was gone for just about 24 hours, and everything went very well back in Paris. Big thumbs up to Billy for that!

Overall it was pretty much the perfect vacation - we lived like locals, did some touring, and tried to take it easy (though we got tons of exercise!) It was hard to come home at the end!

I'll finish up with two videos and a slideshow from Paris. Next time, I'll do the trip to Toronto Theodore and I took, and hopefully also do stats/general updates.

Bird chasing champion:


Flamingo rock out: