play time!!

every walk is an adventure for Sasha. She needs to climb every rock (like this little 'mountain' 1/2 way up the hill from our place), walk every wall, try out every set of stairs and rampways she can find, test out the acoustics of entryways and gateways to underground parking, say hello to the pansies and daisies, play hide & seek, blast off like a rocket ship, sing and dance...5 blocks is a long way to go on Sasha time ;)

She has just as much fun exploring the neighbourhood as she does playing at any of the parks around here (we are most fortunate to have 5 play parks within a short walk of home). And our outdoor living space is getting plenty of usage too. Here a a scattering of pics to show a bit more of where we are:

after taking the pic of Sasha the mountaineer, I turned around and took this pic facing towards our home down the hill, though primarily you can see the green space to the east of our co-op. and FYI, the red car is a bad neighbour I just happened to catch in the act of dumping their garbage...there are many folks who go out of their way to dump their garbage in the dumpsters of the buildings in our 'hood. fast becoming a pet peeve for me as we live closest to the bin for our co-op - see the view from our bedroom balcony (thankfully we have great neighbours who help keep it all tidy, and it is picked up often enough to not be a problem.)

Che, modeling the car seat as a new style of head gear, is standing on the sidewalk just outside our place, and here you can see the view up the hill. literally at the corner of 5th & Fraser, and our fave co-op car is just 1/2 way up the hill (at the tip of the Fraser st sign in the pic)

some views of our outdoor space from outside the fence, and out the kitchen window. nice view while doing the dishes. a new addition of a little wood burning pot-bellied stove was handed down to us from our wonderful neighbour Amada (fast becoming like a grandmotherly character in our life here at Northern way) and life continues to grow on our patio...except the carrots and the dill. lucky Che...the zucchini is doing just fine! lol!


below our co-op is Great Northern way, a busy street, and one that divides us from the industrial area to the north. this view (I thought the clouds looked pretty cool this day - though they do obstruct the nice mountain view) overlooks a vacant property, soon to become The Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) - neat!


Anyways...enough about the neighbourhood we play in! Last weekend we went for a BBQ at Gilly's new home in Port Moody. Rob grilled us up some fabu burgers, Che played some tunes for us (he gets better and better...especially playing "Smoke on the Water"), Sasha and Merlin played, and we simply had an overall amazing time - as always!




some of you might question my reasoning when I tell you I let Sasha play with my new camera (after all she did break my last one!)...but in the carpeted confines of her room I felt it safe to let her try to take some pics - she asked really nicely - and here are the 2 she took:


and now that your all relaxed and happy with life in Sasha land...here's some drama for you: tonight we took her to Children's Hospital emergency after she cut her head open on the coffee table! aaaaagh! but serously...she is ok. we actually weren't sure if we needed to take her at first. but the wound was deep enough that I felt unsure - and considering it was her head, we took no chances and we went to have it checked out.

I had just about finished getting ready to go out with a couple of friends for the night when she took the tumble and smacked her head right on the corner of the table. Thought she was gonna be ok 'til we realized the back of her head was covered in blood! drop everything, let's clean it out. after rinsing and applying pressure to it we saw that it had stopped bleeding...ok to breath again. because it is under all her hair it was hard to see how bad it was.

Fortunately, my friend Brenda was ready and waiting for me...and she came to the rescue and took us to the hospital. As we were told it would be at least an hour, I sent my friends on the way to enjoy the wonderful friday night at folk fest without me, and Mark and I hung out with Sasha at Children's.

She was a total trooper, as always, and was super helpful for the nurses and doctors. They ended up using a medical crazy glue to pull the wound together as it wasn't deep enough for stitches. I'm glad we went as I don't think regular crazy glue is as good to use at home ;)

here's a couple of pics of Sasha passing time before (we had to wait about 1/2 hour on the 'fast track' so hung outside a bit) and after (we waited almost 1/2 hour for a cab home):


Before we go enjoy the rest of the folk fest this weekend, I'll finish with an update on her eyes. Here's the quick summary of the past 2 weeks: had an appointment with the eye specialist last week, had a follow up appointment this past wed, and she is slipping into a cancelation time slot for her surgery - July 31!

Basically the procedure will take about 20 min per eye, and what the surgeon will be doing is actually moving the eye muscles closest to her nose, to provide more give and flex for her focusing efforts. There are 6 muscles that control eye movement, and I had thought they would shorten the muscles on the outside to pull her eyes back out. His logic is that they don't want to cut anything out, when all they have to do is pick one up and move it instead. Who knew?

The glasses can correct the focusing problem from the far-sightedness (and in fact they are still optimistic that she will not need glasses permanently...which I take with a grain of salt as they also didn't believe, in the beginning, that she would need the surgery ever) and the procedure will correct what the glasses can't which is a muscular problem.

She still has remarkable control over it, so the surgeon is confident it will go well. And "No kids have gone blind by me or anywhere in Canada from this procedure" - awesome. We're lucky not to have to wait long for this to be done as the wait list can be as long as 6-9 months!! If only everyone was fast-tracked like babies are.

She has a blood pressure check with our family doctor next week, and surgery the week after. I cannot believe how patient and helpful she has become with all these appointments we seem to have had lately...and even managed to handle a hospital visit after bedtime with fun and humour.

video this month: Sasha and the boys having fun on Gilly's deck :)