Getting there!

Neil finished painting at around 1am on Friday night/Saturday morning and now there is a good chance we will get everything in decent shape before Grandma and Grandpa come on Tuesday, especially since we had competent help on Saturday. Finn and Lily are already arguing over who will set where (Grandma beside Lily? Grandpa beside Finn AND Lily?) at the new table. ☺

The place is still a mess, but as long as the kids can find some toys everything is well.

And while Lenny needs to inspect everything ...

... Blue prefers to hang out where the potential for a dropped morsel of food is the highest - close to Ina.

"Somebody get that crazy lady with the camera outta here!"

Speaking of outside. It's supposed to stay sunny and warm, up to 21°C during the Easter week! Spring is so nice, with everything coming back to life.

For Grandpa: the "kind of like a" Saskatoon berry bush looks like this right now:

Finn loves to swing, and once he figured out how to do it there was no stopping him.

Our next door neighbours finally have their swing set up, too, with a swing for two kids - how convenient! ☺

8:30pm on Saturday. With all the kids asleep, the next building project is tackled. Step 1: sort everything.

Some time past 11pm: Step 17. Why the heck won't the drawers fit? Oh, look! There was a 50% chance of getting Step 3 wrong if you didn't exactly know what the finished thing is supposed to look like. We give up and go to bed around midnight.

5:45am: Ina is up. 6:30am: Neil manages to get her back to sleep (she does that for him WAY more easily than for me) and crawls back in bed. 6:45am: I get up with Lily. 7:15: Finn is up. I buy myself some peace and quiet (and time to play on my laptop ☺) with "Horton hears a Who".

Tomorrow I will take Finn to the doctor's to give blood for his allergy tests. We really hope an allergen can be found, but other than maybe the (bourbon?) vanilla we have no idea what it could be. And he has never reacted to vanilla before. If his reaction was due to a cross allergy (a combination of things that are harmless by themselves) we might never know what caused it.

I have since learned a few things that I never thought I would need to know. Finn had the kind of anaphylactic shock where the blood pressure dips so low that it can lead to a life threatening situation - hence the loss of vision, no feeling in his hands, blood draining from his face, near unconsciousness etc. (The other kind would be that you go into respiratory distress to the point where you can't breathe.) Then he also had the gastro-intestinal symptoms (cramps, nausea, diarrhea) and skin involvement that are typical. I also learned that asthmatic kids are more prone to severe allergic reactions than others, as if the asthma wasn't bad enough.

Keep your fingers crossed for us that the blood drawing won't be as horrible as I am afraid it will be. Finn is deathly afraid of needles, and I will have to lug all three kids to the doctor's.