Are You Prepared?

I know a lot of people in my neck of the woods think that all the news reports about  Hurricane Sandy are overblown hype, but I can't help myself. Today's blog is a PSA.

Way back in 2003, Steve and I were caught off-guard by the East Coast blackout. In 1999 we were caught-off guard by the Great Toronto blizzard. Before that it was the Eastern Ontario/Quebec icestorm. The list goes on. We're going to do our best not to be caught unprepared again.

According to Environment Canada, Hurricane Sandy is expected to impact the eastern coast of the United States and parts of Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes over the next few days. The storm covers a wide area and the impacts of heavy rainfall, high winds and possibly snow may be experienced well away from the centre of the storm.

"The Canadian Red Cross encourages all Canadians to take some steps to ensure their safety. Be prepared to take care of yourself and your family for at least 72 hours in an emergency," said Mike Morton, Canadian Red Cross director of disaster management in Ontario. "By taking some time now to store emergency food, water and other supplies, you can provide for your entire family during a power outage or evacuation."

The Red Cross recommends families have AT LEAST the following items ready in sturdy,easy-to-carry containers such as suitcases on wheels or backpacks in the event of a power outage or an evacuation:

• Water: Store two litres of drinking water and two litres of water for washing per person, per day, keeping a 72-hour supply on hand for your family and any pets.
• Food: Store at least a 72-hour supply of non-perishable food for each person. Ensure that there is enough for each member of your family.
• Extra clothes
• Extra blankets
• Manual can opener
• Crank or battery-operated flashlight, with extra batteries
• Crank or battery-operated radio, with extra batteries
• Extra keys, for house and car
• First aid kit : http://www.redcross.ca/main.asp?id=032983
• Cash in small bills
• Special needs items - medications, baby formula and diapers, and equipment for people with disabilities.

Visit www.redcross.ca/ready for a full list of supplies that can be added to your emergency kit.

The Red Cross also recommends families have a plan in place in case they need to evacuate their homes. For tips on how to make an evacuation plan, visit www.redcross.ca/ready.

Whether you think the reports and warnings about Sandy are overblown hype or not, I encourage you to be prepared and stay safe. This one might be our Hurricane Hazel, or it might not, but if you prepare now and don't need those supplie, you'll be in much better shape for the next storm, or power failure, or house fire, or....  Better safe than sorry, me thinks.

Cheers!

*Thank you to the Red Cross for most of this!

Silencing the Alarm Bells - Phew!

Sorry for the delay, friends. I've been trying to catch up at work and at home, but mostly on my sleep. ;)  I forget sometimes that this isn't just a personal diary but a public blog. Sorry about that.

Great news!! After a sleepless and worriesome Monday night and Tuesday morning, I went to my local OB on Tuesday. She confirmed that BGB was moving and her heartbeat was a perfect 140 BMP. I got a better night's sleep that night but was still on edge.

Yesterday we spent the afternoon at the Special Pregnancy unit at Mount Sinai. They did a thorough ultrasound, which I sobbed my way through. She is perfectly average in all respects. Yeah! They even did extra movement checks and she scored 7/7 on them. Double yeah!

We're 26 weeks along now, and the docs are increasing our monitoring as we approach some crucial milestones. Our next ultrasound and blood work at Mt. Sinai is in two weeks. I'll be going there at least every two weeks until we get safely to the 34 week mark, and seeing my local OB between those appointments. They are keeping a close eye on her movements, growth and placenta, as well as my thyroid and uterine arteries, to make sure that we stay out of the danger zone. When we get to 34 weeks safely, they'll make decisions regarding her bed rest, c-section, lung development drugs, etc.

For now though, I am very relieved to say that everything is going well. PHEW!!

BGB didn't cooperate for pictures yesterday but
this is what a relieved mama looks like at the end of a long but happy day.

Silencing the Alarm Bells

It was another sleepless night for me last night. BGB didn't seem to be moving as much as she has been recently and it worried me. It hopefully it was just my paranoid mama mind. Her pattern of movements is solidfiying but because her placenta is anterior, it's harder to feel her move because she mostly kicks that instead of me. (Heck, this might turn out to be a good sign that her placenta has moved to where it needs to be.)  She's been moving around this morning so I'm not in emergency mode, but once the alarm bells go off, it's hard to silence them.

We were at the lab yesterday and have an OB appointment and  ultrasound at Mt. Sinai tomorrow, but I'm not going to wait that long. I've called and made an appointment to see my local OB this afternoon to check her heartbeat and my blood pressure. I'm sure that everything is fine, but that niggly memory is in the back of my head so an extra trip to check things out makes sense. Rather than a nuisance trip, it's exactly what I've been encouraged to do and what I encourage other moms to be to do. This could be nothing or it could be the start of a pattern that many women notice in the days before a stillbirth.

Assuming that everything is ok, I'll start daily kick counting soon. Movement is the best sign of a baby's well-being in utero and the goal is kick counting is to notice any significant changes to her routine of movement, and possibly head off a problem. In the meanwhile, we're in the limbo land, where things like her pattern of movement isn't predictable yet, leaving a lot of room for worry about what's happening in there. There's a pill to help with nausea, but sometimes I wish there was one to shut off the alarm bells in my brain. I guess it's training for all those sleepless nights to come.

Cheers!

The Name Game

Time is flying by. In just a few short months, BGB will join us and life will never be the same again. She's going to need a name and picking one is no easy feat. Some get crossed off this list before they're even written down, and others we bounce around to see how they feel. Our rules for first names are simple:

1. We automatically eliminate names of women in our families and daily lives who are still alive. (We are going to make an exception to this rule if BGB turns out to be BBB, but you'll have to wait to see if that happens to find out what we've decided.)
2. Jonas has to be able to say it.
3. It has to be something that works for a little girl and also a grown-up woman.
4. It can't be too off the wall.
5. It can't be something that makes any of us cringe.
6. We have to like the predictable nicknames.

The boys were pretty easy to name. About a month before he was born, I had a dream that we had a boy and named him Jonah. Steve thought it was too bibical and as we were discussing it, the song "My name is Jonas" came on the radio. Problem solved and name chosen. Owen was a character name a movie we watched just before he was born and it came to us both immediately in the delivery room.

This time around, we toss in a few wacky ones to make it a little more fun, but Esmerelda, Alphaba, Gertie, Xena, Sue the Second and Filomena are all officially out of contention. We've also eliminated Kahlan, Daphne, Emma, Olivia, Lillianne, Ruth, Amy, Hannah, Robyn, Isabell, Allison, Faith and Cassandra.

This week's nominees are:

• Sam (one of Jonas's favourite TV characters)
• Gabrielle (Steve's suggestion after we took Xena off the list)

Choosing middle names is a challenge as well but not quite as pressurized. Here's where family names come in. We like the idea of making our kid's middle names tributes, as long as the person had real meaning to us. (i.e. No empty gestures). Jonas's middle name is Robert, after Steve's dad and my Grandpa Lillie, and Owen's was Michael, after my dad and brother. This little girl has her middle names all picked out so now we just need to settle on her first name.

We do have three current forerunners that we're deliberating on. They aren't listed above, and we're not going to share them. We need to save some surprises!  :)

Cheers!

Bucket Filling

Back in January 2011, I wrote a blog entry about a couple of books called "How Full is Your Bucket?" and "Have You Filled a Bucket Today?" that I was using with the kids to try to teach them to be nice to each other. I was thrilled yesterday to find out that Jonas's school has become a "Bucket Filling School"!

http://momsglassofwhine.blogspot.ca/2011/01/how-full-isyour-bucket.html

Bucket filling is all about building other people up - helping them, being nice to them - and not dipping into other people's buckets to fill your own. The book encourages positive behavior as children see how rewarding it is to express daily kindness, appreciation, and love. Bucket filling and dipping are effective metaphors for understanding the effects of our actions and words on the well being of others and ourselves.

Personally, it's one of my favourite books for kids and Jonas's teacher apparently agrees. She started a bucket filling program in her class last year and has amped it up this year. Every day, each student gets up in front of the class and tells about one nice thing they did for someone else and one nice thing someone did for them. They then add a cardboard drop of water to their classmates plastic buckets, which are kept on display in the classroom. 

Jonas's new principal liked the idea so much that the entire school now takes time every day to do the same thing. What a great idea, especially in this day and age, with bullying front and centre in the headlines.

We found out about this initiative last night when Jonas's teacher called us to talk about his field trip-essay issue yesterday morning. She made a special point of letting us know how proud she was of Jonas for volunteering to answer a question at the Science Centre yesterday. He stood up in front of at least 60 people and explained about how to use bleach to do laundry. (Something I had no idea he knew about, but fully intend to exploit now that I do.) She said it took him a while to say it, but he didn't get frustrated and explained himself very well. He was beaming when he got off the phone with her, and so were we.

Have you filled a bucket today?

Cheers! 



Field Trips, Essays and Tears

Today started dark and early at 5:20am. As I headed to the bathroom for a shower, Jonas met me there. My initial thought was to tell him to go back to bed, but before I could get the words out, I realized that he was crying. When I asked him what was wrong, he winpered that "Today is the field trip to the Science Centre." Because he's always so excited about going there, I thought maybe he had had a bad dream or something. Starting the day with tears and "Mom, can I please not go on the field trip?" was not at all what I expected.

It turns out that he has been dreading this trip all week. Not because he doesn't want to go, but because he knows he's going to have to write an essay about it when he gets back to school. He loves the science centre and he loves field trips but he is overwhelmed at the thought of having to write about it. Between is struggles with handwriting and organizing his thoughts, he was literally sobbing at the thought.

He has his occupational therapy assessment in three weeks, and we're truly hopeful that he'll start getting the additional help he needs once that happens. The school board has limited resources so all the red tape has to be gone through before he can get a share of them. After 4 years of inaction at his first school, and two years on the waiting list at this school, I say "It's about bloody time!"

I left a message on  the school voicemail this morning, requesting a meeting with his teacher and the special resources teacher. They talked us out of persuing an official IEP (Individual Education Plan) last year. They have been fantastic with him in the two years we've been there, but it seems that whatever unofficial accomodations they had in place for him have not been reestablished this year. Whether it's because of the teachers union's work to rule campaign or not, I don't know, but the boy needs help so this mama it putting her big girl boots on and going back into the trenches.  Wish us luck!

Cheers!

Wordless Wednesday: Yesterday, when I....

 


....was at work....
I kept coming across the street name "Queen Filomena"
and pondered naming BGB that for a second or two each time it came up.

... picked Jonas up after school...
he was not his usual happy self because he had just been
accidentally hit in the head with a stick while playing in the woods beside the school.

... went to charge my tablet....
I wasn't my usual happy self because the cats had chewed through the power cord.

  

... went for a nap...
I couldn't sleep because Jonas practiced "Hot Cross Buns",
the only song he knows on his recorder.

... went to put cream on the belly...
'nuf said?



... went to watch my favourite show on Netflix...
I was a disappointed to realize that I have to wait a little longer
to see the first episode of the new season.

When I went to bed...
I laughed because this is what I found when I checked to see if Jonas actually brushed his teeth.
Oh well, I guess beggars can't be choosers!

When I came back from having a middle of the night snack demanded by BGB...
I found the occupancy rate of our bed had doubled in my absence.

Cheers!