Our new tent!

This was purchased with birthday money (thanks Oma & Opa, and Grandma & Grandpa). It's HUGE!!! It's supposed to sleep 13 people, which means it'll be very comfortable for the 4 of us! It has 4 rooms, and 3 entrances. Darren and Evan will each have their own room. There's an "e-port" for an extension cord.

Eric can easily stand up inside of it (I can too)!

Lots of fun!

And the cast came off!

So we went to the hospital on Friday to have the cast removed. The sound of the saw concerned Evan a bit, but he was quite brave. The doctor said that everything looks good and there should be no long-term effects. In case you were wondering, the cast didn't slow him down one bit!!

He's on the move!

Happy Birthday Grandpa!

Happy 59th Birthday! Evan's favourite part was the Strawberry cheesecake. Grandpa enjoyed it too!

Auntie Ann and Uncle Jim also came down for Grandpa's birthday!

More pictures

So, proving once again that our boys are related (besides the blond hair/blue eyes) they both sleep the same way. I have a picture of Evan around the same age as Darren here, bum up in the air. And even at 3 years old, Evan will sleep like this every now and then! We had our appointments at the hospital on Friday. Evan saw the orthopedic surgeon again and they did a second x-ray. You can't see it that clearly, but if you look closely at the small bone on the right (tibia, I think) you can see the break. The larger bone has a small compression fracture. The doctor was quite pleased with the progress and said that it can come off in two weeks!! That will be just under 4 weeks in total, since the original fracture!! Evan is getting around so quickly on that cast. We were at the park today and it didn't slow him down a bit!

Two hours later Darren had his appointment at the follow-up clinic. A few of the nurses from the NICU came by to see the boys because they knew we were coming in. Evan charmed them all, and showed off his cast. The doctor and nurses were pleased with Darren. He is now 21 lbs and right on track with or ahead of most of his developmental milestones. His problem is similar to Evan's - gross motor skills (standing, walking, muscle strength). He seems to be doing better than Evan was, though, so he may be walking soon. He's pulling up on everything, and will move from the couch to the coffee table. He's finally given up the army-crawl and is crawling for real. He learned to sign "Thank you" and can say "Daddy" and "Kitty" (or his versions of).

Uncle Adam came for a visit last week to see a Jays game with Eric. Evan is quite enthralled with his Uncle Adam.


Happy Father's Day, Eric! We had a nice relaxing day at home. Darren just LOVES playing with his Daddy!

The Cast

So this is the temporary one he had all week. By the end of the week it was looking pretty ragged!
As you can tell, his spirits were not at all affected...he had a great time posing - I had a hard time getting a decent picture!


The fibreglass one was put on Friday morning. He was very excited to get one with soccer balls on. It will likely stay on for 4-6 weeks. We have an appointment in Oshawa next Friday morning to check up on the progress. Unfortunately we also have an appointment at the same hospital that afternoon for Darren (the neo-natal follow up clinic), and weren't able to schedule the appointments closer together. It looks like two trips to the hospital next Friday.

Evan is crawling everywhere these days. The nurse said he should be able to walk on this one, but it is too akward for him right now.

Celebrations!

Somewhat belated, but well-intentioned!




This was supposed to be the June picture, which I liked because they were dressed up from church. But then Evan decided to make the June photo more interesting!

Evan's turn again!

So my plan was to come in and write about Darren's follow up appointment on saturday. We went and saw the same doctor that saw us the week before, and he seemed very relieved that Darren was doing better. If a Doctor is relieved, than it must have been somewhat serious! He's "out of the woods now," according to the Doctor. He looked at my ear, which wasn't healing, so he prescribed stronger antibiotics. If it doesn't clear up in a week or so, I'll have to get tubes put in!! Tubes in my ears!! I thought that was just for little ones!! Oh well.

So that was what I had planned to write. Then Evan decided to "help" daddy with a wheelbarrow full of sand. It tipped over and fell on his leg. We weren't sure how serious it was, so we just decided to wait and see (this was Sunday afternoon). All day Monday he refused to walk on it, so I took him to the walk-in around 7:00 (same doctor again!). He suspected a break and sent us to Emergency. We signed in, got some x-rays and waited. And waited. About 10:00 the doctor looked at his leg and the xrays and told us there were at least two breaks. He sent us for more x-rays to check for others. Evan did SO well...it was late and he was sore and tired, but he didn't complain too much. There were no more breaks, just the two. One large one on a small bone in his lower leg and a small compression fracture in the larger bone in the lower leg. Another doctor put a cast on and he was so good with Evan. He told me that sometimes they sedated the little ones just to get the cast on, but he didn't think it would be necessary. He gave Evan five and they just talked and giggled throughout! After almost 5 hours, we came home and slept.

We have an appointment on Friday in the morning to see and orthopedic surgeon to put on a fibreglass cast (that he can walk on) and verify that there's no further damage. But that means another few days of Evan on the couch. It's been a LONG first day!

Did I mention something about being sick of doctors? Hospitals? X-rays? Thankful that we have the access, but I think we're done for a year or two!

I took a few pictures but our computer is broken for now and I can't post them. I'll post them soon (along with some belated) happy birthday wishes.