Kai Juhani Laukkanen

Kai Juhani Laukkanen

December 21, 2010

Baby Kai arrived on Dec 21, 2010. He was about 2 weeks early! I actually went into labor while at work. I was up at Lakeline Animal Care and it was my official last day of relief work scheduled. At 4 pm, my water broke. I was 45 miles from home, so had to make the drive in early rush hour traffic! My doctor's office was not too happy about that! I arrived home about 6 pm and finished packing my bags. Markku and Suvi were so excited! They dropped me off at the hospital while their nanny Tracy took them to McDonald's.

I had called Heikki from work, so he could try to get out of New Orleans before the last flights of the night. (He missed Suvi's birth, remember?) Luckily, he did make it (thanks Southwest!) and arrived about 10 pm. My mom had come up from Boerne to be with me before he arrived.

When I arrived at the hospital, I had to go through the ER. They were confused because no one was with me, I was so calm (no contractions yet, it was my third kid, and that is just how I am), and I guess someone had given birth in the bathrooms a week before. So the admittance nurse was way more freaked than me! The doctor on call (Dr. Rutter) wanted to start pitocin right away since I was not contracting, but I convinced her to wait until Heikki arrived, just in case! So about 9:30 pm when we got confirmation that Heikki's plane had landed with him on it, she started the pitocin.

Nothing much happened for awhile, but I did not want to wait to get too painful so I got the epidural when it was painful enough! Then they turned up the pitocin, but Kai did not like that...his heart rate dropped and they had to do all sorts of things and place monitors and all before it came back up. Then we decided we did not need pitocin at all and I still progressed. My doctor, Dr. Jennifer Goss, likes to deliver her own babies, so she was called in for the actual delivery. She made it there, but barely. Just like with Suvi and Markku, once I got ready, it all went real fast! It just takes awhile to get to that point!

It was an interesting night to be born...it was a full moon and there was a total eclipse as well. (We had clouds so even though we were up all night, no sights of the eclipse!) A very rare event! Kai was born at the fading end of the eclipse at 5:22 am. He weighed 7 pounds 11 ounces, right in between Markku (7 pounds 14 ounces) and Suvi (7 pounds 10 ounces) and 20.5 inches. He was perfect! He had a stork bite on his left upper eyelid, and an interesting capillary pattern in his right ear (you see an array of blood vessals inside his ear). He was real loud right from the start...he cried right away with all his lungs!

He was a great eater right from the start. We delivered at the new hospital here in Kyle, so it was a new place for us as well. The nurses pretty much left us alone since we had been through this twice before and were happy to release us on Dec 22, so we were home for Christmas!

We all agree, this was the best Christmas gift ever! Here is a link to a great E card my mother made:http://secure.smilebox.com/ecom/openTheBox?sendevent=4d6a45324d7a67314e544a384e5455354e6a63784e773d3d0d0a&sb=1

Finally an update...

Well, I am finally getting around to posting again. We have had lots of changes to report!

First off, Heikki has been called up for active duty in the Coast Guard for the past 4 months and will be for another 4 months. He is in New Orleans for the oil spill. He is very busy, dealing with financing the requests for aid. So it can be pretty high pressure, but with the spill finally contained and most of the accessible oil cleaned up, it is slowing down some. Now that things have settled down, he is able to come home for visits Tuesday and he leaves Wednesday. The kids really miss him a lot and often ask why the oil spill isn't stopped yet (although in theory it is, just the work is not yet down). His job at ExpressJet is waiting for him, but there are likely to be some changes when he returns as they have been bought by another company. It is unsure if this will be beneficial to us or hurt us in the long run. We are hoping he can upgrade back to captain soon, but it will likely be spring or later before that happens.

In bigger news, we are expecting our third baby! I am 21 weeks 4 days along which puts the due date as Jan 2. We are hoping for an earlier birth, as our insurance will expire when Heikki's job at the coast guard expires Dec 27! We can purchase some other insurance for the gap between his active duty coverage and his regular job, but if he/she comes earlier, we can get 100% of the birth covered! Come on Christmas baby!

Heikki decided we are going to wait to find out the sex...I wasn't so sure so now we have an envelope that was sealed by the ultrasonagrapher that has the sex written on a piece of paper inside! I was afraid i would not have enough willpower to not open the envelope, so I made Heikki take it to New Orleans with him!

This baby is very active. He/she moves so much, it is quite amusing sometimes. I am gaining an acceptable amount of weight but it is more than with either previous pregnancy, and I am way bigger this time around! I am trying to stay active but it is hard with this summer heat! I am mostly through the morning sickness at this point, but still have nausea sometimes and lots of headaches. I am really enjoying being pregnant again, probably more so as I know this will be our last child. It is quite bittersweet and makes the pain worth the gain!

Markku and Suvi are very excited about this new baby! They both want it to be a girl at this time, but at first Markku wanted a boy. They can not wait for this Christmas present!

Markku has started his second year of preschool, but he only goes part time again (2 days a week). He was so happy it just started again after taking a summer break. He loves school. He is singing lots of songs now-that is new. He always loved music but never really sang before. But too bad he is a really bad singer like his mom! He says really cute things like "that's my fater" meaning that's my favorite". and "truxins" for construction trucks. If he hurts me or makes me upset, he runs up to me and gives me a hug and say "I want to apologize". It is so cute! He is a fantastic swimmer and is currently been learning to swim freestyle. We may put him on swim team next summer-we will see how things go with the new baby! He loves to play with his cars, trucks, planes...anything with wheels as he puts it! He has a great imagination and makes up stories for me all the time. He has even started quoting movie lines! He was yelling " I hate it! I hate it!" one day and I told him to stop, that it was not nice. He told me he says it because Lightening McQueen says it in Cars! That is why-so it must be ok! He is also a great helper. He helps me clean, carry in groceries, help mummo plant flowers and pick up dog poop in the back yard! What a helper even though it often makes more work for me!

Suvi is a very bright, sweet 2 year old now! She is talking up a storm and loves to sing songs as well. She loves to do anything Markku does and for the most part he is a great teacher. She loves to play cars and trucks with Markku, but still loves her babies and stuffed animals as well. She took a dance class this summer and hopefully this fall as well. It was a tap, ballet, tumbling class and by far the cutest thing ever! It was full of 2-3 year olds. She is also an amazing swimmer and could spend all day in the pool if we would let her. She can swim about 15 feet or more under water! She is fearless in the water.

We had so many vacations this summer! We went to Port Aransas, Texas to spend 5 days at the coast with my mom and dad. The kids loved the beach and the aquarium. The kids and I also went to Buffalo NY to visit my side of the family. It had been 9 years since I was there! A long time. Heikki was supposed to come with us for a trip to Oregon/Washington, but after spending a day at 3 airports in Texas and taking a cab from airport to airport, we were unable to catch any flights to the West coast! We travel stand by and summer is a horrible time to travel, so we ended up taking a quick trip (driving) to Corpus Christi again. Heikki was able to get in some wind surfing, and we enjoyed the time with him as he has been gone for a long time this summer. I will be going to New Orleans for a veterinary conference in September and will get to spend 5 days with him as well, but the kids will stay with my parents.

Hopefully I will get better at posting again, and can update with some more photos soon!

Well, we have once again been super busy and I am apparantly not a good blogger! But, we did have a 3 week adventure to Finland (the kids and my first trip) and Denmark, and then in order to continue to survive financially after 3 weeks with no work, I have been working non-stop for the past month!

Updates:
Markku is really enjoying his pre-school he goes to twice a week. He is starting to get how to hold a pencil properly (a feat his pediactrician said he should have mastered a year ago, but his teachers say is perfectly normal for him not to get it until he is 5) and has made friends he tells me about! He really wants to ride his bike with "only 2 wheels", meaning no training wheels. We have this handle my mom got for us to hold on as he rides, and he will go for 10 seconds or so without Heikki hanging on. Probably the worst thing for us, well Heikki in particular, is that he has recently picked up a SOUTHERN ACCENT! It is really crazy-most people around here do not have accents as they have moved from other places. This is Texas, not the deep south. But, nonetheless, he has started to say "Ye-ah" and really has quite the drawl. Not sure if that will last, but it sure is there now.

Suvi is really talking now, although there are still many things I do not understand right away. She has been talking in sentences for about 2 weeks now. She still really loves animals-especially horses and a "baby sheep" she got for Easter. She has a few strange words, like for Markku she says "Se-ta" or something like that. She really doesn't say Isa yet, but when I think I hear her it sounds like sha sha like Markku used to say. She is my artist-she loves to draw and color and sing. She has been holding a pencil correctly for about a year now! The difference between boys and girls is amazing. She turns 2 this month, I can not believe that!

I will hopefully post an entry soon about our amazing trip to Finland, and figured this was a good start. At least I logged on!

Happy New Year 2010

Happy New Year 2010! We have been ultra-busy as usual. For New Year's we travelled to the Central Oregon Mountains and stayed with Heikki's family in Sisters. We went and did all sorts of crazy winter things that kids who live in Texas never get to do! After a loooooooooong flight and drive in (we arrived at 3:45 am which was 5:45 am Texas time!),a few hours sleep and off we went sledding with the kids. We had rented snow suits-whoever heard of such a thing?-and so the kids stayed pretty warm. They did love sledding (the first day Markku was hungry and tired so it took until the second day for him to LOVE it. Suvi really liked it right away.)

Luckily many relatives like Uncle John were there to help us with the kids:

Heikki's family rents a house in the Black Butte area (near Hoodoo ski resort and Sisters, Oregon) every year for New Year's. It is a beautiful area in the mountains with very tall gorgeous trees (except where the forest fires went through...that really bothered Markku to see that). This is a picture of just the Laukkanen family. There were probably at least twice as many total guests at one point or another. We got to see Mikko and Joanna and their 2 kids who came all the way from London, Kaisa and John who are about to have their own first child, Liisa and Johan who came from New York/San Francisco via Sweden I believe (lots of travelling there, never know who is where when), mummo and Bill, Jesse (John's brother) and then all the extended family and friends as well (who are not pictured here):

It was super hard to get everyone looking and there were 2 or 3 photographers so everyone was always looking the wrong way!

Heikki has been dying to go skiing since we left Alaska almost 4 years ago. This was his chance (and his Christmas present), but unfortunately he is not as young as he used to be and hurt his knee the very first day sledding. He was really bummed. Now he wants another Christmas present but I keep trying to tell him it doesn't work like that.
So on our very last day in the mountains we decided it was a good day to try Markku skiing. The age limit was 4 yrs old, and so I did what any parent would do-I lied and made up his birthday. sure enough everything fine....until they asked him how old he is! And he says "3" and shows 3 fingers! They said they were worried at first (I had already dropped him off) but he did really well and was able to learn to ski! We got great video that I am clueless as to how to download it (I have tried on You tube and it keeps saying there is an error after a forever long period of time) so you will have to look at still pictures until I can figure it out (or a loving relative who has a video of it can do it for me!-that would be you John!)

Markku and mummo just before the lesson

Markku ready to hit the slopes!

Suvi is too young to learn but she sure looks cute waiting in the lodge and sledding!

We had to leave and head back to Cathlamet, Washington to mummo and Bill's house after skiing. Here is Markku on Heikki's old bike!

We went on a day trip to the Oregon coast and went through a nature preserve. We were looking for deer and such, but only found this type of John DEERE heavy equipment, which made Markku oh so happy. He has a John Deere video he got for Christmas and sings the songs to me everyday "John Deere, make them nice and strong, John Deere".

Here is another picuture at the refuge showing the Columbia river and the low clouds against the mountains: It is so pretty there.

We then ventured on to the Seaside Aquarium-it was very small but still lots of fun. The kids are playing with the touching poo and pointing at the stingrays:

Needless to say we had a great trip. We loved seeing everyone again-including my sister Jenn who we surprised at 11:45 pm on New Year's eve as we were driving by her house on our way to the mountains! Happy New year Jenn! It was great to get back while Mikko was visiting with his family-they live so far away.

After we returned it was a rush getting back to work and preschool for Markku. One night, Markku decided he needed to help me clean. This is how he cleaned up our living room:

See, the floor is now clean! He said " I know you hate tripping on stuff, I clean up for you!"

More cute Markkuisms: 1. Mommy, Isa is making me cranky. He won't get me more Hee hee milk (soy milk).

2. He stepped on my foot and I said "Ow!". he said, "You ok. " So cute as whenever he gets hurt and has that shocked look on his face I say "You're ok, let me give it a kiss".

3. Marrku tells "funnies" now-he is trying to make jokes! He will say something random and then say "I tell a funny"

4. Not so cute things: he learned to say " I don't care." He says it a lot, like when I tell him to clean up, stop teasing his sister or go to bed. He also says "I hate it" now. I don't like that too much either. Then he says something that sounds like " Freakin Cumquat" when he gets frustrated. I do not know what that means or where he got it...any hints anyone?

Suvi also scratched me the other day and I said "Ow!" She was making these funny smooching noises and then said "Mama, mama" And when I looked down at her she kissed me. She was kissing my owie! It was very sweet.

Catch Up!

Merry Christmas!

Well, it has been awhile since I posted an entry, and we sure have been busy! I still have issues posting pictures on this blog and then easily moving them around, so I am going to tell the storey not necessarily in order, a little backwards so I do not have to move the pictures around! Pay attention!

Well, Christmas has just passed. It was so much fun this year. We had our new house and Santa still managed to find us-both at our home and at mummo and Ukki's! Lucky kids! We had cookies and orange juice for Santa-that is what Markku says Santa likes to drink. Guess what?!-Santa did drink his orange juice! We also left out Reindeer food, a tradition I had never heard of before this year!

Suvi got Baby dolls, cribs/cradles, high chair for her babies, a cool tea set and lots of Little People to play with:

Here she is sitting in her toy high chair-playing with her little people's car and her new doll.

Cup of Tea anyone?!

Markku gots lots of great toys-back hoe loader, tonka tow truck, pirate ship, race cars and even a new camara:

He LOVES his new camera and took 480 or so pictures the first day! Here is a sampling:

One of his first-very blurry. I think it is Mummo

then later this more in focus one of Isa

And still blurry but a favorite of mine: Suvi

Today Mummo came to babysit while I did some errands. Things always get a little crazy with Mummo around. Markku found some Styrofoam and had an indoor snow storm:

He said, "uh-oh we better clean up. Mommy will be mad! And it was so staticky they had to vacuum it all up!

Here is Suvi braving the cold snowstorm! (Actually she is trying on her snow suit we rented for our upcoming trips to the Oregon Mountains and Finland).

Ok, back to Christmas: Here is the Jumpy house our family in Denmark sent the kids! It was a favorite as well. These are action shots!

Markku and Suvi spent a night in San Antonio at the Riverwalk with Mummo and Ukki to see the lights and right the boat and trolley. They had a great time and Mommy and Isa had a date night!

Dancing on steps at SA Riverwalk

Snuggling with Ukki

Markku had a school Christmas program. They had each class of preschoolers and Moms Day Out kids sing a song and tell the story of Christmas. It was really great-if you knew a kid in the class!

Markku was a shepherd

Since we last updated you, Markku learned to ride his bike (well, it has training wheels). He rides very well, up and down hills, on the trails in our neighborhood and even at Mummo and Ukki's. He even rode 2.3 miles with me and Heikki one day!

This fall we enrolled Markku in a soccer league in San Marcos. At first, he wouldn't leave the bleachers. Then the next week he stood there while Heikki moved his foot for him! then finally he figured it out and had a great time! He will kick the ball into the net and yell "I win!"

Turns out Suvi loves soccer as well.

Ok, so I know this was a little out of order and all, but at least I posted something! Next year I will try to be better about it. My christmas gift was a new laptop-and since my keyboard no longer works on my other computer....I guess that is a good thing!

We are off to spend New Year's with my in-laws in Oregon. The kids will see snow for the first time-well Markku saw it in Alaska when he was 4 mos old, but I don't think he remembers it very well!

Happy New Year everyone!

Halloween 2009

Halloween started off with Suvi being sick-she had a fever of 101.8 in the morning. She stayed home, got some motrin and Markku and I went to swim class. Went I returned, she still had a fever. So, with all the hullabaloo about swine flu (she is not yet vaccinated), we headed out for the doctor. Being a Saturday, I was limited to the ER or urgent care. We spent 3 hours at our local urgent care-she tested negative for swine flu, but that apparently means nothing as the swine flu bedside test is about 10% accurate! But she was now 102.8 and really not feeling well, runny nose and cough. So they wanted to take some chest x-rays and monitor her until her fever went down. Chest rads were clear so then we just had to wait until she acted like a toddler. Once the doc saw her running around the room, even with a 101.6 fever, he was convinced she could go home. They have no idea if she has the flu. She how she does they say.

Of course now we were late for trick or treating! We rushed home and luckily mummo and Isa had Markku really excited and ready to go. Markku was Thomas the train-he picked it out-and Suvi was supposed to be Dorothy from Wizard of Oz. Suvi was feeling a lot better after motrin and Tylenol, so we dressed her up and let her walk around to a few houses (we were bad parents I know. But we didn't let her touch any kids!). they really loved trick or treating! It took a while for them to get it, but they sure liked it after the first few houses gave them candy! We didn't see any other Thomas' but we sure did see a million Dorothy's. So much for original!

Here she is with Toto and her ruby red slippers! She and Markku loved those shoes! I made them by gluing red sprinkles over the top of red satin shoes. They looked awesome!

Here we are ready to go out trick or treating.

I had to work the next 2 days, and Heikki was babysitting. When I came home after the first day, about half the candy was gone! I had said that morning that Markku could have 3 pieces of candy that day-boy oh boy someone didn't listen! After Monday at work, there literally was no candy left! I was so upset-no one needs to eat that much candy in 2 days! Especially since I wasn't home to eat it too! Markku did point out to me (after I told him how upset I was) that "Isa ate some too!" Well, I am glad it wasn't only the kids!!!

Suvi got better after 2 days of fever so I doubt she had the flu after all. Now we must wait and see when and if she can get vaccinated for swine flu. She is under 2 so she cannot get intranasal like Markku got and then our doctor does not want to use the multi use vials as they contain some thimerosal (even though it is reportedly safe!). So we are still waiting! I know many children have gotten the flu and parents say symptoms are mild, but I have hears accounts of perfectly healthy children dying. I am not willing to take that risk, it really does alarm me! So more vaccines for the kiddos!

Markku has started soccer. He was so excited to play. He would run around and kick the ball and say "I am a winner!" I do not have photos yet....mainly because he refused to even walk onto the field the first day. He just sat by the sidelines saying " I don't think so. I don't know how. I am so tired." I was so mad at him for not trying...but then he did fall asleep on the short car ride home! He really was tired. Then the next week I was working and Heikki took him and literally moved his foot for him to kick the ball. He eventually got into it, but mostly just ran around after the other kids. His first game was Saturday, but I was out of town so Mummo Frederick took him. He did sit on the bench with kids but just stood still when it was his turn to rotate onto the field! But it is a start. Unfortunately they did not have the game schedule out when I signed him up and we will miss all the rest of the games due to them conflicting with swimming! Oh well. It is just exposure right now anyways.

Suvi, now feeling much better, is really turning into a book lover. See her with her book? She almost always has one in her hands and reads to herself or brings it to use to read to her! It is very cute.

Big boy firsts

Markku is a school boy now! He goes to First United Methodist Church preschool in San Marcos on Tues and Thurs. Here is a photo of his school- they have a pumpkin patch in October.

Here he is walking down the hall on his own to get to his classroom. He has his race car lunchbox by his side.

This is his classroom and his teacher, Ms. Melissa:

He was very excited to go. Here he is with Suvi, waiting to leave for his first day of school. He picked out his own clothes too:

Of course, with school comes homework (yes, preschoolers have homework!!!). He had to decorate his pumpkin. We were at our new Target in Kyle (that was one happy day for me when they finally opened! My own Target only minutes from my house!!!!!) and Markku spotted some firetruck stickers and said "we need to buy them for my pumpkin". He remembered he had to decorate it! So we bought them and he has the only pumpkin with firetrucks on it! There is a mouth, nose and eyes as well, but they are just randomly stuck on so it just looks funny! He is very proud of his pumpkin.

The end of Sept/early October also brought us some much needed rain. We are in such a drought here that even with tons of rain this month we are still in a severe drought in Kyle/Hays County. It is amazing how much it can rain here! One of the rainy cold days was the day we had tickets to go see Thomas the Tank engine. I was not too prepared and forgot to charge my batteries, so I only got a few pictures before the camera died. But here is one of Thomas arriving:

Markku and Suvi were both tickled beyond belief to see him. They were in awe! Suvi just pointed and screamed! It was like seeing a rock star... We did have fun with Mummo, Ukki and Isa so it made for a great day out. The rain even stopped for us for our visit, thank goodness.

One beautiful fall day I decided we would finally go visit the Austin Zoo. So Markku, Suvi and I went to feed the animals and see rescued wildlife. The Austin Zoo is a rescue zoo, so it's animals are limited to those that they have had to rescue. They have goats, llamas, pigs, chickens, peacocks, lions, tigers, wolves, turtles and birds. And a few monkeys too. It was small but a nice place to visit for the afternoon. The lions were roaring when we got there...it was a little freaky, like maybe they had escaped and were about to hunt us down. But we actually never even saw them stir as they were either asleep in the grass or inside (the inside one was making all the racket). The kids got to feed the goats and llamas. They loved that. And there was a small train to ride as well.

Markku is also learning to ride his bicycle with training wheels. He is actually riding it! He can't turn yet or go up even the slightest hill, but he is pedaling.

He is going to start in an indoor soccer league this week as well. We are trying to get him involved and playing with other kids and learning how to be on a team, etc. He is not quite getting the idea of sharing...we are battling it out at our house right now. His teacher told me he was a little worse at sharing than most of the other kids in his class...great! I am definitely seeing that at home as well. But hopefully we will get through this phase soon, and maybe even Suvi will learn how to share with all our training, fighting and taking toys away since no one wants to share!

We have had a busy month with Heikki going back to Corpus Christi for his 2 weeks of active duty and me working at the emergency clinic and one clinic in San Marcos/Wimberely.

We are getting ready for Halloween. I think our new neighborhood will be really busy with trick or treaters unlike our last ones....I wonder how much candy I need to buy!