Wrapping up Little Dumer News 'til after Christmas

It's been a long time, I know! It's that busy time of year, lots of baking and decorating and shopping and socialising. And there's more to come! Which is why I'll just leave this post to say we are going on hiatus until after Christmas. In the meantime we will leave our Christmas letter and our fabulous Best of Jordan slideshow for you to enjoy (Grandparents, we have a nice DVD version for you, of course!) Make Merry everyone! xxoo

Holiday 2009

Beloved Family & Friends,

It’s that time of year again! The time for cookie baking, cider sipping, gift wrapping and reflecting on yet another year that we won’t soon forget. Hopefully you are reading this letter in a cheery Christmas buzz,
rather than laid-up with the swine flu. If the latter is your fate however, try to take comfort in your recently acquired immunity and treat yourself to buckets of peppermint tea infusion and some pampering.

We know you are just dying to read all about the newest addition to the Dumaresq family tree, but we wouldn’t want to start out with the really good stuff first, or we risk sounding anti-climactic. And just as it is with
your Christmas presents, there should be no peeking further into the letter! Suck it up – you’re getting work first!

As usual, Chris started off the year with some change on his job. His manager accepted a position with LucasArts in San Francisco, leaving Chris in charge of a team responsible for testing all the centrally created content and technology for EA Sports. So far things have gone well for Chris; he survived another busy summer, not to mention a few company-wide layoffs of over 1000 people. With this risk in mind, Chris took a second job! He likes to joke that he had to do it in order to support Deb’s extravagant spending habits, but really it’s for the challenge and to pad his resumé. His new job is as an instructor at Vancouver Film School where he teaches a course on Quality Assurance for their Video Game Design program. It’s a series of seven 3-hour classes offered 3 semesters per year. He has had a few frustrating moments dealing with students who think they will be the next hotshot videogame designer, but in the end it is worth it to play their final projects and hear how Chris’ teachings helped them make a better game.

Deb got through Holiday 2008 at Starbucks well enough but once January came around she started experiencing some back pain. Once the pain became regular back spasms Deb decided she had better get a bit of help from the doctor. He surprised her by telling her it was time to take it easy and leave work because the back issues would not be resolved until the baby weight came off. This was not at all what we were expecting to hear, but after a second opinion and some consideration, Deb went off work and on to disability leave. Initially there was a lot of guilt, Deb felt as though she had left her team in the lurch and didn’t really get the closure of saying good-bye to favourite customers and her partners, but in the end it was really nice to get the opportunity to enjoy the last few months of her pregnancy, do all the nesting things, and (best of all) take naps whenever she felt the urge. Other than the excruciating back pain, the pregnancy was fairly typical, with morning sickness in the first trimester and heartburn in the last, but Deb never had a single craving or any crazy swelling. Baby was pretty active and kicked lots, and while in utero he had hiccups at least once daily! We found out on February 17th that the little creature resembling an alien in all the ultrasounds was a baby boy and human after all! In March we decided to go to The Vancouver Island Baby Fair in Nanaimo. This is what happens when a mom-to-be is home to watch daytime TV: the marketing people get to her. We hopped a ferry and headed out. It took us less than an hour to walk through the exhibits and Deb started to feel bad that we’d gone to the expense of a ferry trip for this tiny show, but as soon as we got home we checked voicemail and discovered that we had won the grand prize: a bundle of baby products valued at over a thousand dollars! The time and expense was suddenly all worth it! We got some really fabulous stuff and a fun story
to tell.

In April our very dear friend Aída, with the help of some decorating skills from her husband Mark and Chris, threw Deb a huge baby shower at Mary’s apartment rec-room. The highlight was the blindfolded baby-feeding contest which Deb & Naomi won in a landslide victory! To spoil us further, Crystal Schmidt along with her mother Starr (with husband Clinten as Chef) hosted yet another amazing baby shower with our Oregon friends and family when we came for a brief Easter visit. This one was co-ed and it was fun to see Chris participating in shower games even if he didn’t manage to win any!

As you know, Deb (in a delicate manner of speaking,) is of rubenesque proportions, and her obstetrician was on like a broken record about watching that Deb not gain any weight at all for the pregnancy. Pffft. Riiiight. Though Deb put on just 22 pounds this garnered her no congratulations or praise from Dr. Beauchamp and in the last few weeks of the pregnancy the good doctor expressed concern that the babe was a big one (they estimated him at 35 weeks to be 7.5 lbs) and subsequent concern that his size would make it difficult for him to engage in the “dropped” position. So at the 38 week visit the Doc gave the okay for the resident med student to “strip the membranes.” (Go ahead, Googleit, we’ll still be here when you get back.) She said that it may help Deb to go into labour sooner than if nature had its way, and as she guessed this would be later than usual, stripping the membranes would simply “grease the wheels a bit,” and not to worry as it’s a bit “hit or miss” and would likely take a couple of tries before we saw results. The next day marked week 39 and we had planned a barbecue with our best friends the Drivers and the Grimms as this was to be the last weekend we weren’t scheduled to be parents. We had a wonderful evening, left scads of unwashed dishes piled in the sink and went to bed safe in the knowledge that we had at least another week of couple-hood before we became a trio. That is, until 3:30 am, when Deb’s water broke.

Jordan Ross Dumaresq was delivered by caesarean section at Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster at 7:29 PM on Sunday, May 24th, the day before his Mother’s 32nd birthday. He weighed 8 ½ lbs and was 20 inches long. An ecstatic and emotional Nanny Mary as well as Mark and Aída Driver were there minutes after his birth to welcome him to the planet. And now, none of us knows how we ever bungled along without him. Naturally, we think he is beautiful, and though we may be biased, we’ve been assured by friends and strangers alike, that he is a cute kid. We also frequently get the comment that he has a nice head shape. People often ask if he is a good baby, kind of a strange question as we don’t think there can really be such a thing as a bad baby, but we believe him to be a happy one.

When he was six weeks old, Gramma Nitzie and Grampa Tom came up for a visit and spent some time with their new Grandson. Gramma has always seemed to have a way with little kids (Deb thinks it’s her cool hands, they are very soothing,) and Jordan was no different, he seemed to like her immediately. But poor Grampa had the dubious honour of being the person to experience Jordy’s very first diaper blow-out! The weekend after Gramma and Grampa’s visit, Nanny Mary, Deb’s Aunt Virginia, Uncle Larry, Cousin Stuart with his wife Tina and their boy Evan all enjoyed some R & R with us at a cabin on Paradise Lake in the Okanagan mountains. We picked a good week to go away, enjoying pleasant temperatures while the lower mainland experienced some serious heat. Everyone had fun playing card games, making s’mores by the campfire or fishing for Rainbow Trout in the lake. We even took a side trip to Kelowna where Jordy got his first dip in Lake Okanagan. By the time we got back in to town, Jordan was eight weeks old, so we took him for his first round of immunizations and then to an audiologist appointment.

After his newborn hearing screenings in hospital came back with inconclusive results we were asked to bring him to a hearing clinic for an Auditory Brainstem Response test. Through this examination we discovered that Jordan has a hearing loss, likely caused by genetic factors. His hearing impairment is bilateral (in both ears) and sensorineural (meaning a problem in the inner ear and thus permanent.) The level of loss is mild-to-moderate, meaning Jordy has a tough time hearing whispers and the level of hearing loss is worse for high-frequency sounds meaning he has a harder time with subtle speech sounds such as “sh,” “th,” and “ch.” It was difficult to hear this news at first, but after a day or two we realized that we are fortunate to have this information while Jordan is so young because we haven’t lost the ground that some parents lose by finding out when a child is two or three or even school-age. We have been able to get him outfitted with hearing aids and we are working with an intervention agency called the Deaf Children’s Society of BC which has arranged for weekly Speech-Language Pathologist home visits, an Early Literacy Foundations drop-in sessions and even at-home American Sign Language instruction. We are hopeful that all of this will result in little to no speech delays and an easy transition into a regular kindergarten when the time comes. The only real struggle we have now is keeping the hearing aids in Jordan’s ears and out of his mouth! We have not allowed this bump in the road to make anyone in our house unhappy, he’s a funny little guy and we’re enjoying him to the max. The fact is Jordan hears a lot even without his hearing aids and he doesn’t have any of the other developmental issues that often accompany hearing impairment; this is a lot to be thankful for.

We did have another moment of sadness this fall; we had to say good-bye to the old Buick Skylark. Now that we have the Little Dumer to take care of we thought it was time to get a newer, roomier and more reliable vehicle. The old girl was an important part of the History of Chris’n’Deb, she logged a lot of miles during our long-distance relationship, so we have a special place in our hearts for her, but she was starting to nickel and dime us a bit. After much debate of “should we or shouldn’t we”, we traded up for a new 2010 Toyota Matrix XR. Though an added expense, it gives us the peace of mind that we won’t be broken down in the BC rain with a cranky baby. Also it’s pretty and shiny.

This has certainly been a life-changing year for us! And even in the unexpected difficulties we have managed to extract some element of inspiration, thankfulness and joy. We hope that you have had an opportunity to do the same and we wish you all the best in the year to come! Merry Christmas everyone!

Holiday cheers!

Chris, Deb & Jordy

Below is a link to our YouTube page where you can view our slideshow The Best of Jordan 2009, Deb's other labour of Love this year... http://www.youtube.com/user/flanker388