Old Fashioned

One of my favourite things is one of my least technological things.

I got it from freecycle on a complete whim.  I got it about 5 years ago.  At the time I had vague ideas about making and decorating cakes for some children we might have at some point.  I got it thinking it would save me money.  I got it thinking it would save the planet some plastic.

I did a cake decorating course last year and this was the thing that I was most glad I had.  I still use it now and will use it for years to come.

You can buy much more sophisticated models, but I love this one.

Not Ballet

The boy, much to his disgust, is too young to join the girl’s ballet class.  I think I’ll probably have to enrol him when he turns 3 in October.

There is an area directly outside the studio where most of the mum’s sit.  If you go up a slope and around a corner there is another, seated, area with a small table which overlooks the studio.

I can see the girl.

She can see me (not that she’s bothered if she can’t see me).

The boy can gaze at the lesson in awe for about 25% of the time.

He can copy the girl for another 25% of the time.

The rest of the time the boy plays with these.

The boy and I were joined today by two other mothers of young boys who also had daughters in the girl’s class.  They hadn’t thought to bring cars to entertain their younger sons.  I felt a teeny bit smug.  (Sorry.)  I was also pleased that the boy had someone to play with.

The Gallery – Portrait

To be fair, it’s less of a portrait and more of a snapshot of our afternoon but I think it still qualifies for the gallery.

When the girl was little she had a very pronounced squint.  That concerned me as I used to have a squint which had to be trained out.  I still get it when I’m tired.  Both the husband and I wear contact lenses which means that there is a good chance that one or both of our children will also have bad eyesight.

She was referred to our local NHS ophthalmology service and has been seen by them six monthly since she was about 9 months old.  The squint has long since disappeared but at the last appointment she was diagnosed as potentially long sighted.

During today’s visit she had to wear a pair of glasses that blocked the sight in one eye and then point, on a card that she was holding, to a letter that matched the one that the ophthalmologist, standing a little way away, was pointing to.  Then she got a pair blocking the other eye and off we went again.

It turns out that her eyesight is better than mine with corrective lenses.  Nothing to worry about there then.

She was discharged and I left feeling relaxed after such an uneventful visit to the hospital.

Ongoing

The boy’s health is a bit of an ongoing saga at the moment.

Something is triggering itchiness and puffy eyes, on a completely irregular basis, but I have no idea what.

I could take a couple of educated guesses.  Everytime we’ve spent a significant amount of time in our garden he’s been bad.  We’ve got a silver birch in the garden and they are early pollinating trees, which I think would be about right.  We didn’t spend any time in our garden today but he was still poorly this afternoon.  We were at a friend’s house whose cats spend a lot of time inside (I think).  Or, maybe it’s the virus still working it’s way through his system.

I’m vacillating between either taking him to the doctor’s tomorrow and saying I think he’s allergic to cats (or birch trees, or both) and can he be tested or waiting for a couple of weeks to see if the virus goes and he improves.  Or doesn’t.

I wonder if we should go back to cat friends house.  But I don’t want to trigger any sort of reaction really.  I’ve got another friend who has cats but the boy doesn’t seem to get affected at her house.  I don’t think.  But maybe because her cats are outside a lot more the reaction isn’t as severe so I didn’t notice it.  Too many buts for my liking.

I like to be in control of what’s happening around me, especially when it comes to my children, and I’m finding this not knowing really hard.  It’s not just not knowing what’s going on now, it’s also not knowing when we might next encounter a nut, or if we even will.  I know people whose, now teenage or grown up, children had a severe reaction when little and haven’t had one since.  On the face of it, that’s brilliant.  But can you imagine spending all that time just not knowing?

I took this on the way home this afternoon.  The traffic was atrocious so I had plenty of time to grab a quick picture.

NB:- No children were endangered in the making of this picture, although I was in a minor state of panic all the way home.

Field of Women

I read the following post written by the lovely Kim from Frogpondsrock.  She said that anyone could copy it and put it on their blog so I have because I think it’s a great idea.  If we had something similar over here I would definitely take part.

I think it’s fairly unlikely that I know any Australians that Kim (or any of the writers of the equally wonderful Australian blogs I read) doesn’t already know but things like this should always be spread as far as you can, so here goes.

Kim says

“I have been asked to help spread the word about the Breast Cancer Network Australia’s field of women LIVE event 2010, which is going to be held in Melbourne.

It’s taking place on Friday, 7 May 2010 and will see 14,000 women and men standing together in pink ponchos to form the Pink Lady silhouette on the MCG, reflecting the number of women expected to be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010. The event aims to raise awareness and much needed funds to support women diagnosed with breast cancer (BCNA is a unique not for profit organisation, its sole focus is on providing complete support for women who are diagnosed with breast cancer and their families).

I remember the cold terror that gripped my heart when my twenty one year old daughter told me that she had a hard lump in her breast. I remember the fantastic relief when the lump was just a cyst.

My grandmother had a masectomy in her seventies and is still going strong at the ripe old age of eighty seven. I have had three lumps in my breasts over the years and they have all been benign.

So I am more than happy to help spread the word here on my blog and you can help as well my lovelies.

You can follow them on Twitter @BCNApinklady

You can join the Breast Cancer Network Australia Facebook fan page.

You can register to attend the event at www.fieldofwomenlive.org.au

You can provide a link to the event www.fieldofwomenlive.org.au on your blog and encourage your readers to promote this link on their websites and blogs as well.

You are more than welcome to copy this and post it onto your blog as well.”

Run

I used to see the top of a child’s head in a buggy and the other one walking beside, holding on, when we went for a walk.

Now I see this.

I like it.

The boy is still not right but I don’t know what’s going on.  We’re going to have an experimental day inside because I think he might be reacting to something in the garden.  By the afternoon, over the last few days, he’s got itchy puffy eyes and sometimes is scratching his torso.  He’s got a very runny nose and is quite grumpy – not like him.  It looks like hayfever to me so hopefully a day inside will see him clear of symptoms and we’ll know where we are.

Sun Lover

Today has been the husband’s favourite sort of day (apart from the getting up with the kids this morning bit, thanks for that love).

Today has been hot and sunny and we’ve spent pretty much all of it outside.  I’m not a huge sun worshipper, I’m far too pale for that, but when it’s hot and sunny you’ll find him sitting on the bench at the end of the garden soaking up the rays.

Ballet (part II)

In all the grumpiness of yesterday, I forgot to tell you about the girl’s first ballet lesson.  I’m still slightly flabbergasted by the change that came over her.

When we got there, I showed her the room that it would be in and then we went and found a seat for the boy and I.  One side of the studio is a glass wall so you can see what’s going on and equally she would be able to see us.

When it was time for her lesson to start she strode away from me into the room and introduced herself to the teacher, who she’s never met before, with poise and confidence.  I was amazed and so proud of her.  What happened to my shy little girl who hides behind my legs when she meets new people?  I think she looked over to where we were once, or maybe twice.  She was completely in her element.  I know she’s my daughter so I’m biased, but I honestly think she was the best one for watching and listening to her teacher.

As predicted, the clamouring for ballet shoes and a pink tutu began the second she came out of the lesson and I caved in this morning.  I think it says quite a lot about the small town that we live in that there is a shop dedicated to dance attire.  When I realised how much the shoes would cost, I convinced her that she would be dancing in her fairy dress in future.

The shoes got put on when we got home and she’s had them on ever since.

Here she is, showing me what she learnt in her first lesson.

She soon gave up on that though and went freestyle,

and it wasn’t long before she was totally immersed in dancing to her own internal music.

Slapped Cheeks

Well, that should give me some interesting google search visitor types shouldn’t it?  Sorry if you arrive here and it’s not quite what you were expecting.  You probably want to try the site that came up either above or below mine.

Turns out that what the boy has is slapped-cheeks syndrome.  I deduced this when he got up this morning with very red cheeks.  Of course, being the awkward soul he is, he got a rash on his neck first and not the distinctive rash on his cheeks.  Having the rash on his cheeks would have given me a fighting chance of working out what it was.

It would also have helped had I known that the rash, when it’s not on the cheeks, is incredibly itchy.  Bizarrely when it’s on the cheeks it doesn’t itch.  How on earth does that work?  Still, it wasn’t his body coming out in hives or urticaria.  Phew.

Of course we’ve still got the puffy eyes and wheezing to contend with, which is a mild allergic response to the virus.  I double checked when I went back to the doctor’s this morning to get my diagnostic suspicions confirmed.  On the upside, that’s not likely to happen every time he gets a virus.  No, I don’t know how that works either.

What I do know is that this is making him a bit miserable.  He’s mostly cheery but will suddenly be down in the dumps or clingy for no apparent reason.

The Gallery – Wrath

Before I get onto this weeks Gallery post, I’d like to fill you in on what’s been happening since I posted yesterday.

The boy was puffy of eye and coughing/wheezy of chest at bedtime last night. We gave him piriton (anti-histamine) and started his blue inhaler (the reliever which we use when he’s wheezy as opposed to the brown preventer one which we use twice a day regardless).  He’s had a cold so I was starting to wonder if it was hayfever and maybe, because of his startling ability to conk out at the sight of a nut, it was just a bit worse than I’d ever had.

I scrapped that idea this morning when we discovered that he was still puffy, less wheezy/coughy but had a rash on his face and neck.  He was also rubbing his eyes and had a temperature of 100 (sorry, I still work in farenheit, it’s a bit more dramatic than celcius).  More piriton and some calpol (a paracetamol suspension for children) were administered.

I took him to the doctor who, unsurprisingly, told me that the rash was caused by a virus.  She was good though, she gave him a thorough examination and confirmed that there were no secondary infections in his ears or throat.  What she said next surprised me a bit.

Apparently, if you are severely allergic to something and you contract a virus, it can trigger some allergic responses – puffy eyes and wheeziness for example.  Apparently it’s an immune system thing.

I took him home with a vague feeling of uneasiness in the pit of my stomach.

The husband had booked today off work.  We had planned to take the kids up to London first thing to go to the Aquarium, grab some lunch and then maybe go on the London Eye,  We’ve got free entry to both which runs out at the end of the month.  When I got back from the doctor’s it was lunchtime so we had some lunch (we are so adventurous, aren’t we?).  By the time we’d finished the boy seemed ok – a bit pimply but the puffyness had gone down and we’d told them both about going to the Aquarium so we decided to go to avert the tantrums which would have ensued had we cancelled.

The boy was a bit grumpy on the train platform, but I put that down to us refusing to let him out of his buggy.  When we got on the train and let him out he seemed much happier.  Unfortunately, over the course of the journey he started getting worse again.  His rash became obviously uncomfortable and he switched between scratching that and rubbing his eyes.  He started coughing again as well.  We went to the chemist at Waterloo East and spoke to a “health assisstant” as both pharmacists were busy.  He told me to give him more piriton which we did and I also got some calamine lotion for the rash.  I’d forgotten how comedic calamine lotion can be when liberally applied.

Still, it covered up the spots so at least they let us into the Aquarium.

We did the Aquarium in our usual thorough fashion.  It was so much easier having the husband around as he could leg it after the boy (who never slows down, even in the grips of a full on asthma attack he would still be trying to run around) which left me to shamble along with the girl who wanted to take a picture of everything.  And I mean everything.  I think we need to get her a cheap digital camera because she’s so keen and it would be great to let her give in to her enthusiasm without me constantly worrying about my camera being dropped.

By the time we got home this evening, the boy was starting to cough and wheeze again, along with rubbing his eyes and generally being a bit tetchy.

At bedtime we administered one of everything we can and at this point all we can do is wait and see what tomorrow brings.  As usual, I’ll be hoping for a miracle overnight cure and as usual I expect I’ll be mildly disappointed in the morning.

You thought I’d forgotten about the Gallery, hadn’t you?  Not at all.

When we got home this evening I tried to download the photo’s from my iPhone to the laptop.  I cut and paste them into the relevant folder but when I went into it most of the pictures were missing.  When I looked back on the phone they were still there but if I unplugged and plugged back in they weren’t appearing on the laptop.  I tried several times but couldn’t find my pictures anywhere.  I got more and more frustrated.  I took more pictures on the phone in the hope that downloading the new pictures would magically make the old ones appear, but nothing.  It was at that point that I finally lost my rag, swore at the laptop, swore at the iPhone and decided to take a picture so that they both knew how cross I was.

I give you…….. Wrath.

Turns out I was looking in the wrong folder when I connected the iPhone to the laptop.  I’ve taken over 1000 pictures and it’s very helpfully created a new folder for my pictures.