My Wife Is An Absolute Trooper!

For anyone who doesn't know, my wife is the most absolute trooper ever!

You may ask... "Why is your wife so awesome? What makes her so tough and amazing?" Well first of all, she's pregnant; that's enough right there that she has to go through that process and make it out the other side! Let me tell you it was pretty bad with the first one on the way how sick my dearly beloved Carley was feeling each and every day... pretty much like morning sickness on crack! This one will be our second child together and oh my goodness, I didn't possibly think it could ever get worse!

It's a special thing when your wife isn't able to get around and do as much as she wants to... not because it's hard to move around when pregnant, but because she's just so sick that she can't get out of bed without puking almost every morning. Medications don't make the sickness go away; they only serve to make her tired and keep her locked in bed like a caged animal instead of spending good time with her family as she would prefer to do. I can't imagine what it would be like to go through that each and every day, but I would gladly share the burden with her if I could even up to the point of taking the full sickness upon myself if for nothing else than to give her a much needed break.

Now of course we can't be sure of the final result, but perhaps the reason for the increased sickness is due to this child being larger than the last? Our first daughter was quite small... I believe 4th percentile if I remember correctly? And... based on the ultrasound results from recently, this one MIGHT.... be around the 94th percentile mark. Of course there's still a few months to go before we find out the end result, so maybe that size will level out to be closer to her older sister, but I do still think that an increased size may be the cause.

So here I am trying to help out by doing dishes, laundry, transport the child to daycare, and make enough money to get by... only hoping that I'm able to do a fraction of what needs to be done to make it all the way. I can't imagine where I'd be without such a tough woman in my life right beside me each and every day.... that I wake up in bed.

Wish us luck with our upcoming second child. I've heard it gets more difficult when more come along and I haven't yet figured out whether I'm excited or scared for what's in store for us.

~ Kyle Welykholowa

UPDATE

Back to Family / Life

=== Rollin' rollin' rollin' ===

     So recently Isabelle has decided that she understands how to roll from her back to her front and from her front to her back. Lately she's been rollin' rollin' rollin' all the time back and forth. It's kind of adorable that she just does it whenever she pleases, but at the same time it can be a little bit dangerous and occasionally mind boggling when she decides she's too lazy to roll back and then cries about it.

     We used to leave her on the couch at times to hang out in comfort rather than being on the floor, but now we can't really leave her anywhere with some height to it because she might roll right off and hurt herself. This isn't too much of a problem, we just have to be careful to remember to put her somewhere safe before leaving her for a moment to do something else. I can't imagine how awful I would feel if she fell off of anything because I forgot to put her down.

     Then there are times when she wants to roll over a bunch but she's too tired to keep going. Sometimes she will roll from her back to her front then she'll get frustrated that she can't make it back over again. She'll start to cry like a banshee in pain so we'll go help her out and flip her over only to have her do it again and again. Sometimes I absolutely don't understand what could possibly be going through her head. Unless she somehow understands that it gets her the attention that she's looking for.

     I actually watched her one morning after putting her on the bed with Carley roll over onto her tummy... then Carley turned her back and she rolled right over again... so Carley turned her back and she kept doing it again and again until Carley adjusted and picked her up. I'm pretty sure it won't be long now until she starts figuring out how to move and then it'll be all sorts of fun having her wander around the house.

Good luck to us. ^_^

~ Kyle Welykholowa

Incoming Baby!

     You really don't realize how unprepared you are for an incoming baby to pop into your life until you end up in the hospital twice either thinking you're going into labour or thinking you may have to be induced if you've managed to hurt yourself. Let me just say, first of all... it's just not fun to sit in the hospital for four hours. Luckily, our lovely hospital in Moose Jaw gets us in and looked at nice and quickly and they have touch-screen TV things that make the stay so much nicer than every other trip we've ever made to the hospital in Regina.

     Recently we've been into the hospital twice for two different reasons. The first time, Carley lost her mucous plug and started having a constant pain and consistent tightenings which made everything seem pretty real. We got a hospital bag and a snack bag packed and went off to the hospital. Turns out the baby just turned or dropped in a funny way which caused all the pain, but that along with the loss of the mucous plug certainly seemed like a reason to think it could have been going on. That... and we have no idea how much pain or what the feeling SHOULD be like once Carley ACTUALLY goes into labour.

     Our second trip to the hospital was because Carley fell down the stairs. I know! That's crazy, right? Don't worry, she's alright. At the time we were quite worried about the baby because Carley hadn't felt much movement if any since the fall and she normally feels lots of movement pretty often. She was also a little bit dehydrated because she wasn't feeling well and couldn't keep anything down throughout the day; not even water. This was concerning to us because she was leaking clear fluids after the fall which we thought could have been a ruptured bag of waters. The doctor came to take a look and found everything is well, so we stayed for another hour and a half which totalled four hours of sitting in the hospital to make sure everything was alright.

     Now I find myself thinking we need to prepare just a little bit more for the baby to get here. We have to install the car seat and get things a little bit more cleaned up; we have plans to move the furniture around in our living room and steam clean everything in the next couple days. I'm also finding that I need to get myself into more of a routine of doing things such as eating in the morning considering it'll be up to me to feel the baby in the mornings. Carley seems to like staying up later and honestly I prefer to be up late as well, but I may have to start going to be early and letting her stay up after me if I can ever get her to let me go to bed without her attached to me. I'm sure like most first-time parents we're going to be just as unprepared and clueless as everybody else and that's alright; it won't make us bad parents. I'm sure there will be times when we're just not sure what to do, or exhausted beyond belief and wanting to break down and cry, but we'll make it through. We're both stubborn people so I'm sure neither of us will let something beat us just because we're tired.

Wish us luck! ^_^

~ Kyle Welykholowa

Puppy Training

     For anybody who has never trained a puppy, they can be a complete pain to deal with. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love our dog, but he has been sooooooooo annoying for us to deal with at times. Usually he's pretty good for us, but he loves to bite as I would imagine most dogs do before they learn not to.

     Now some of you out there might meet Furgle and think, "How could he be a pain? He's such a sweetheart!" Well, don't let him fool you! He's actually a tiny terrorizing monster at all other points in time. Okay, maybe I'm over exaggerating a bit. He's actually not that bad when he isn't biting us all the time. We've recently started using a spray bottle whenever he starts biting to get his attention and get him to stop. He's not the biggest fan of water and to be honest, we're not really complaining about it. He's learning quickly what it means and hasn't been biting nearly as much as before.

     As for house-training him, he's been pretty good with that so far as well. He doesn't really seem to get HOW to tell us he needs to go outside yet and rather stops pretty quickly and just starts peeing... but at least he's learned to pee and poop on the pad (mostly) rather than anywhere in the kitchen. Probably in about a month from now he should be big enough to hold his waste long enough to train him to only go outside (mostly). He's progressing well I think and he seems like a pretty smart dog to me, so we'll see how long it takes him to learn everything we need to teach him. I'm looking forward to him being calm and mature enough to actually teach him some proper commands and things.

     With one solution comes another problem though. This problem isn't really a HUGE deal though compared to the issues that are possible with a dog. Furgle has... started to hump everything. Oh goodie.... I have to admit, it's a little bit funny, but I suppose it's not exactly something that I'd like him doing to things or people in public. He'll surely calm down once he gets fixed as most dogs do. We have no plans to breed any dogs, so I don't think that will be an issue at all. I'm sure just a little bit of persistence will get him to stop in no time. He usually picks up on things pretty quickly so I'm hoping we won't have too many issues with the coming baby on the way.

     So far, best Christmas present ever! ^_^

~ Kyle Welykholowa