playing catch up

So, I have been 30 for a week and a day (I meant to blog yesterday but Bella has been home sick so it had to wait) Much to my disappointment the world didn't end (only disappointed because that makes James right) Really nothing has changed, life has still be crazy and chaotic, I am still exhausted all the time, may be it really is just a number.

My birthday was wonderful, I started the day off with a new tattoo that I have been wanting to get for awhile. I got the girls names done on my arm. I have been feeling like a bad mom having paw prints on my foot for the dogs but nothing for my girls. Tattoo's are an addiction, I was sure going in that this would be my last one, but now it has been on my mind where the next one will go.  I am the wimpiest person ever, needles scare the hell out of me and the act of getting blood drawn reduces me to tears, but for some reason tattoo's don't bother me at all... ok that is a lie, the addition of a paw print on my foot hurt like hell, I will be considering my next puppy very carefully to decide if they get a print on me :o) it took Storm 2 years to get her, I guess she is staying, sorry James.

The rest of my day was fun too, James was off for the day so I got to spend some nice time with my husband that I feel like I don't get to see enough and then my Mom and Dad and brother Shane and his girlfriend Lisa came over with chinese food for supper. Perfect birthday for me!

being a grown up is stupid... I hate tough decisions

so much has changed since my last blog post... at that point my hopes for Ava were to run her at Regionals and Nationals... now my hope is just to keep my little buddy as long as possible...

where even to begin... James and I have a great holiday planned for August, we are taking the girls for almost 3 weeks down to Nevada and California, a stop in Vegas, Disneyland and San Diego plus of course some beach days. We have been planning this for awhile, this is my 30th birthday trip. It has had to be postponed a couple times due to kids activities, but we decided to go the first few weeks of August, it will be nice and hot in those area's, which for my girls to swim on the beach it needs to be hot, they both do very bad swimming outdoors, little purple kids is not much fun. 

THEN Nationals gets announced that it will be in Edmonton the long weekend... We are suppose to leave the Friday on our holiday, we already had everything booked with James's work and a relief pharmacist in for James. Now his boss's are amazing and we would be able to change our dates, but this meant extra time for James to make up for the long weekend, re-arranging the relief pharmacist, ect. But if this is what I wanted it is what we would do. So I had been working on re-arranging and re-planning our holiday, we already have tickets to Taylor Swift in San Diego so we have to be down there for a specific day and plan around that. 

Then I started to notice things in the last week. Ava is struggling to come up and down the stairs, when she has been sleeping in her kennel for awhile she struggles to get up and get going, a couple weeks ago we did a barn practice and she ran 2 runs with Lexi and when we got home she slept for the whole rest of the day. Last night I got home from teaching class and she was curled up on my bed, I came in went to the bathroom, changed my clothes, got a few things cleaned up and she hadn't moved, I touched her side and she didn't move, I shook her a little and still no movement, and my heart sank, I touched her nose and she snorted and looked up at me. Not good... Like I said in my last post, Ava owes me nothing and I owe her everything, and I owe her a life to relax. We won't totally retire, she still likes to run, she can run a game with Lexi here and there and may be a snooker with me every so often, but for the most part Ava is done. And all of this made me think of how silly I was being wanting to take the other two to regionals, I was taking them along because I was going anyways. But for Blossom I just got her back playing and no matter how hard I try I don't do well in stressful situation and I can't afford to project that onto her, I LOVE running with Blossom and I won't risk that for regionals, not now, not until her and I can work together better, I still feel like I am walking on egg shells with her. and Storm, what was I thinking? the poor dog hasn't even run a full trial and I am thinking of asking her to do regionals, I always told myself I would never run a dog at regionals unless they were at least at the end of advance almost to masters, she is still a baby and I want to keep her that way for now.

So, that free's up a couple weekends for me. I cried my tears and now am at peace with my decision. James and I spent two hours last night looking at things for our trip and I can't wait to take our girls. I love agility, but there is plenty of time for all of that. My girls are only little for so long and I want to enjoy every moment I have with them!

old dogs....

Ava is going to be 8 this year... now that is not horribly old for a dog, but cavaliers life spans are usually 9-12 years. The breed has some pretty significant health problems which attribute to the lower life span of other small breeds.

I never noticed Ava getting old, but it hit fast and hard this last year. She has lost most of her hearing, I think some things she chooses to hear and chooses to ignore, but for the most part she is deaf (I learned just how deaf they day I all but vacuumed her while she slept, Ava has been scared of the vaccum her whole life)She has the old dog bark starting, a little white is starting to cloud her eyes and white hairs are springing up everywhere they never have been before, I have been tempted to do some doggy gray coverage. She recently has been diagnosed with a collapsing trachea, another common breed problem.

Ava has been my agility buddy for a long time, she started running with James, but soon discovered playing with Mom was way more fun. I have never expected anything out of Ava, her and I played because I wanted too, while I still had Daisy, Ava had very little interest in agility, she would walk off the start line back to her crate or leave mid course. Then I lost Daisy, I had so many plans, Daisy was going to go to regionals and then nationals in Calgary in 2010, I had to have her put down in 2009. I was crushed. The plan had been to take Ava along to regionals just because I was going anyways, didn't expect her to qualify, then all of a sudden all my eggs were in her basket. Well she did it, we worked hard that year and she qualified and went to Nationals, I even have ribbons hanging on my wall that she won. I had fun with my girl.

A couple weeks ago a friend posted on her blog about the AAC top dog list. I had never heard of this, so off I went in search of it. I had never looked at the stats pages before, just my dogs pages to keep track of q's and titles. So I spent a quiet morning while the kids were at school going through the pages, and I found out some pretty cool things about my Ava.

She made the top dog list in 2010 and 2011, in 2010 she was the #2 cavalier out of 9 on the list, in 2011 she was the #3 cavalier out of 12 on the list. On the overall top dog list she is the #4 cavalier out of `4 on the list. Then I looked at the breed specific stats, there are 213 cavaliers on the list only 6 of them have their Expert Jumpers Bronze, Ava is one of those cavaliers, and the one that makes me happiest is the SteepleChase title, only 2 cavaliers have that, and my Ava is one of those.

Ava owes me nothing in life, she never has, she is the dog that I couldn't imagine not having in my life. She has been there through everything with me, I can always count on her cuddle when it is needed, and even when it isn't. She was only 2 when Lexi was born and she wasn't going to be the baby anymore (and she was my spoiled baby, came every where with me and I carried her around every where) I thought she would take it the hardest, but she could have cared less that she wasn't the baby, she loved Lexi and Bella both immediately when they came home and continues to love her kids. Lexi is now running Ava in agility and Ava can be a bit bossy, but so can Lexi so they make a good team, the things she does for Lexi on course that she has never and would never do for me amaze me, she would follow that kid anywhere. And Bella does her best to run her too, Bella is hard with her speech problems but Ava humors her and follows her around the course.

I have two goals for Ava this year. I want to run her at Regionals this spring and run her at Nationals this summer. Ava will never get her ATCH, I have come to terms with that, she needs 4 master gamble q's, they aren't going to happen, she has never liked distance, and with the hearing loss it is two strikes against. But one more Nationals would be the icing on the cake and then my plan is to retire her. Lexi is working hard to learn to run Storm and Blossom and as much as James hates to admit it, there will be a puppy in our future. I love that Lexi loves this sport so much and I love that she got her passion from running Ava.

I always joke that before Daisy died she had a talk with Ava and gave her the trade secrets of having the patience to run agility with me, and I am pretty sure Ava is being a bit of a snob and holding out on sharing those secrets with Blossom and Storm. It is so hard to break in those new shoes when the old ones have kept you comfy for so long...


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Just a quick note to add on of happiness for the future. Blossom's title certificates came for her Starter Game Title AND her Agility Dog of Canada title. 4 trials this year, (two half trials, two full trials) And Blossom made the AAC Top Dog list for 2012. Pretty cool for my little dog... May be Ava has shared the secrets with her, hopefully she shares them with Storm soon!

this little girl...

Some people know Bella’s story and some people don’t, after this weekend I don’t think there is a better time to introduce everyone to my little miracle baby.

On November 7^th 2008 James and I enjoyed a date night out while James’s parent’s had Lexi for the night I was just over 34 weeks pregnant with Bella (we knew we were having a little girl). At the theatre I kinda noticed Bella hadn’t been moving whole bunch, even after a whole bag of fuzzy peaches it didn’t put her in the tailspin it usually did, but I thought maybe she was just tired. The next day we went and picked Lexi up from grandma and grandpa’s house, ran a bunch of errands and finished all our Christmas shopping. In the back of my head I kept thinking that I hadn’t felt her move much, but kept putting it off as we had been busy so I probably missed it. We went home and Lexi and I snuggled into our routine of an afternoon nap in my bed, for the last few months these hadn’t been as good as they had been because anytime Lexi was even close to me Bella would go crazy spinning and turning in my belly, but that afternoon I slept for 3 hours with no movement from Bella, even Lexi noticed she couldn’t get Bella to move when she touched my stomach. I got up from my nap ate a bunch of Halloween candy trying to get her to move and it just wouldn’t work, so I went off to labor and delivery for a stress test, fully expecting to be sent home in a couple hours after being told I was over reacting.

My baby girl Isabella Jaymes was born on November 8th, 2008 at 34 weeks, weighing in at 6lbs 3oz's by emergency c-section due to lack of fetal movement.

When she came out I thought she was wrapped in a blanket because all I could see was white. Turns out that was her and she was white because she had basically no blood in her system. (her hemoglobin was 2units) She had suffered a fetal maternal hemorrhage. To this day we don't know why this happened, generally this happens when there is a trauma to the placenta and it ruptures, my placenta was healthy and still attached but for some reason instead of taking out the bad dirty blood and putting in new clean blood it just took out all of her blood. Even 24 hours later I had a high concentration of her blood in my body.

As soon as she was born they began a blood transfusion that took hours they had to take out 10mls of the toxic fluid that had gone into her body and then push in 10mls of blood so that they didn't overwhelm her system. After 5 hours they had her stable enough to fly to Calgary to Foothills hospital, but there was little hope she was going to come back.

In Calgary all they really kept telling us was that Bella was very sick, they put her on a cooling blanket to try and slow all the damage that was happening to her organs and brain from the toxins. Her lungs weren't working on a regular ventilator because she had retained so much fluid (she was now weighing over 8lbs just a few hours after birth) so she was put on an oscillating ventilator to shake her body and move the fluid around so she could breath. All the tests were coming back bad, her kidney's weren't working, her EEG's were both pretty much flat line, and things were just bad.

She came off the cooling blanket 3 days later and by a miracle she started to get better, kidney's started to work and she started to pee out all the excess fluid and returned to her 6lbs. Her next EEG came back in normal limits. She had a few MRI's done that do show brain damage in her basil ganglia but we are still unsure of what effect this has on her.

On November 15th she came off the ventilator and we were able to hold our baby girl for the first time. A few days later they started to try and feed her and she had a great suck reflex much to everyone's surprise. I was never able to breastfeed her as they had to monitor very closely how much food she was eating and by the time she got home it just never really worked for us.

On November 22nd she got to come home to Medicine Hat NICU for one more week of monitoring, she was still having some tummy issues that we needed to work through, she wasn't given a full feed until she was 19 days old so it took a bit for her stomach to get working as she had just been on iv for so long.

Bella has seen a lot of specialists in her little life, but we slowing checked them all off the lists, she was seeing a cardiologist because she has a leak in one of the ventricles of her heart, but by 3 months had sealed itself up, we were seeing a neurologist, who at 3 months wanted to diagnose Bella with cerebral palsy because of her increase muscle tone and she told us Bella ever crawling or walking was very unlikely and would be very delayed if she ever did and it would take a lot of physical therapy. Well Bella is a mover, she did everything pretty much by her milestones and continues to impress us all. Her amazing pediatrician wouldn't allow for the CP diagnosis and I am glad she didn't. We have had an amazing support team throughout all of this.

We have been very blessed as Bella has remained a healthy little girl, she has never been on a prescription since leaving the hospital, we only see our doctor at yearly check up. Bella has had speech delays since she was young, we thought that if this was our only hurdle with her we were doing good. (Bella does wear glasses and has since she was 10 months old, but it is a genetic eye problem, and she does well wearing her glasses)

But in the recent weeks we have found out that she is going to need hearing aide. I will tell you I didn’t take this well at first, I was upset and cried my tears, but after a good stern talking to from my Mom I know this is something else Bella can over come. We just spent Friday at the children’s hospital in Calgary seeing an audiologist there who was amazing with Bella. Because there is no hearing loss in either of our families our guess it that her problems are from being on the ventilators and the kidney problems she suffered from when she was first born, ( I understand the ventilators causing hearing problems , but the kidney stuff confuses me, but the doctors would know what they are talking about) So in the next few weeks she will be fitted with her hearing aides and I look forward to see how her speech and comprehension will come with her being able to hear the world around her.

Bella is our world, she drives us crazy (the doctor who delivered her says she has a big purpose in this world for everything she fought for to make it, and I am pretty sure it is to push me over the crazy edge!) you will hear James and I refer to her as the evil one quite often (ok she probably isn't totally evil, but she is a little) But I couldn't imagine life without her and we were very close to living that life. Her smiling face every morning when she wakes up is a reason to get up in the morning, the smile when I pick her up from school and she tells me how much fun she is having, her determination to do EVERYTHING on her own scares me to death, but I wouldn't have it any other way with this little girl!

So I am turning 30....

There... I admitted it and put it in writing... I turn 30 pretty soon... like 16 days, but who's counting. This is something that has scared me for a long time... Maybe scare isn't the right word, but as everyone tells me it is just a number it just doesn't sink in, I don't like the number, it is a big number and not one I am well prepared for. I just don't want too...

Life is wonderful, I am married to the man of my dreams who spoils me rotten, I have two beautiful baby girls that take me from laughing like crazy to the verge of insanity on a daily basis, I have my 3 sweet puppies that are my joys, and the most amazing family that are always there.

So I have decided it is time to try something new and being the beginning of a new year it is the perfect time to start, so I have decided to start blogging... I don't care if anyone reads this, it is just something for me to keep track of what we are doing and something to look at next January and see where this year has taken the family.

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Well we started the new year off in a wonderful way! We took the girls out to my Tante Alma and Uncle Hugo's old farm for some sledding. Mom and Dad took Shane and I out there when we were kids in the summer to see the horses and in the winter I had many snowmobiling and sledding birthday parties out there. It was great to be able to take my girls out there and just have fun. The weather was nice and Mom and Dad, Shane and Lisa all came out too, and we all brought the springers. So that is 7 springer spaniels, IT WAS CRAZY!!! But the dogs were great, no one roamed off, everyone bounced through the snow and tired themselves out good. And boy were they covered in snow! 

I don't do resolutions, I give myself goals for the year, last year was to stop working Sunday's... well that didn't go so well, so we will try new things for the year.I have seen several of my friends doing 52 week projects of a picture a week so I want to attempt this with my girls, I think it would be great next January to have a look through the pictures and remember what we did and see how much they have changed through out the year.

It is a big year, Bella will be getting her hearing aides and we will see how much this changes her life, she starts kindergarten in the fall, we have a big summer trip planned to California and Regionals and Nationals for agility are in Edmonton so I will be working towards those, I am ready to enjoy the ride that 30 will be!