On a Roll

If I don’t post today, I won’t post tomorrow and then another couple of weeks will slip by before I post again.  I miss my blog when I’m not posting.  I like saying hello to the people that stop by.  I love that people who aren’t my family actually do stop by.  I like the record that I’ve built up over the last three years of who we are and what we’ve been doing.

So, this is a bit of a nothing post but an important post because hopefully it will keep the thread going.

Also, I took a couple of really good pictures today so really I can’t not share them (if you’ll excuse the double negative).

The boy, he likes to line things up.

The girl, she loves her arts and crafts.

She also suffers from travel sickness which is why she is wearing one of Grandma’s cardigans and a towel.  Note to self, when out and about do take a change of clothes for the girl even though she’s nearly 5.  She throws up with style.

Vanity Project

I’ve been thinking for a long time that I might turn the first year of my blog, my 366, into a book. It’s completely self-absorbed of me, but I like the idea of a coffee table style book featuring my nearest and dearest.  Also, I’m pleased that I managed the 366 and it would be a lovely record of it.

To that end, I started looking at websites that would help me convert a blog into something that could be published.  I tried several but the one I liked best was a company called Blurb. They allow you to “slurp” your blog into a format that they will print using something called Book Smart.  I can’t begin to imagine how it works, but it’s all clever stuff.

Unfortunately, it’s fairly pricey and will involve a fair amount of work.  While I can “slurp” all my entries and photo’s, I’ll then have to go into my photo files to find my original pictures and switch them in Book Smart.  I convert my pictures to a smaller resolution to go onto the blog to make it easier to load, but those pictures won’t be good enough quality for printing.

As an experiment in how long it would take and what sort of quality book I would receive, I made January and had it printed up.  I can’t remember when but it was well over a year ago.  I was having a sort out yesterday and found my January book.  I didn’t think much of it and left it lying around on the table.

The children found it earlier today and have spent hours going through it.  They’ve been taking it in turns to describe the pictures to each other and having a whale of a time doing it.

While I was taking shots of the two of them I managed to get a good one of the boy (he’s gone all camera shy on me at the moment).  It needs fiddling with to get the colours looking a bit better but that’s one of those things that I always mean to do and never get around to.

Chase

also titled “I love my iPhone”.

A Change is as Good as a Rest

Or so they say.

There are coughs and colds aplenty in our neck of the woods at the moment, so it was no surprise that the boy started to get wheezier and wheezier over the weekend.  We were keeping on top of it with the odd puff of his blue inhaler but by Tuesday evening it was clear that we were fighting a losing battle.  I wasn’t too worried, but I though I’d better phone NHS Direct for some advice and I figured we’d probably end up in hospital at some point.

Note to self, call EmDoc (our out of hours GP service) next time.  NHS direct swung straight into panic mode, calling out an ambulance and a paramedic car, despite me telling them I was happy to drive the boy to hospital myself.  The guy from the paramedic car wasn’t at all impressed (although whether with me or NHS direct, I’m not sure) and I’m not surprised.  The boy wasn’t poorly enough to warrant four emergency health professionals (no kidding, one in the car and three in the ambulance).

The ambulance people thought he was bad enough to be carted off to hospital though, so off we duly went although this time to a different hospital.  It’s in a fairly rough area but I have to say I was pleasantly surprised.

The pediatric A&E at our normal hospital is pretty much a corridor off the main A&E.  The triage nurse is usually in a room with the door shut and there’s very much a feeling of being shoved into a corner and forgotten.  The A&E at the hospital we went to this time is a dedicated pediatric A&E with it’s own staff, space and equipment.  It wasn’t desperately busy (which always makes a hospital nicer) and although at the time it felt tedious we were actually seen within an hour and a half by a very lovely Dr who sent us packing with some prednisolone.

Now, I know that it’s because it was a much milder attack that we were sent home, but I can’t help thinking that maybe next time if we go to this new hospital then just maybe we won’t have to be checked into children’s ward again.

Wishful thinking never hurt anyone.

Oh yes, the picture was taken today – see, the boy is fine.

And Another Thing

My, those pesky days slip by so quickly don’t they?  Another couple of weeks since I’ve blogged and this is starting to look like a decidely sparse wasteland of a blog.

The boy had a good birthday, thank you for all his birthday wishes.  We stretched it out over two weekends as his Aunty D & Uncle P couldn’t make his birthday weekend.  He was more than happy to have two birthdays, especially as it meant he had two cakes (actually I cut his cake in two and froze half, but don’t tell him that).

We had a fairly bad time at his first school event, “Spooky Night”.  I am in the very fortunate position of having as my severely allergic child’s key worker one of my best friends LNFATR (she is a teaching assisstant in his classroom).  She has been there for all of his allergic journey so far and I know that she knows about as much as I do so I feel comfortable knowing that she is in school with him.  She is also on the PTA and was in charge of organising food for “Spooky Night” (which turned out to be one of my pre-allergy worst nightmares anyway – loud music and loads of kids not being organised in a large room).  Unfortunately, she was extremely ill the week that the food would have been bought so other members of the PTA went ahead and bought the food without consulting her.  The boy wasn’t able to eat the hotdogs on offer or take part in either the game or the activity that involved food.  That pretty much left musical bumps for him.

I feel like I’m in a slightly akward position.  I have never been one to push for change for my own sake.  I expect my children to fit into the world as best they can and I don’t want the whole school to have to change their outlook for just one child.  Equally though, I don’t want them to kill my son.

There’s only one thing for it.  I’m going to have to join the PTA.  It’ll be another string to my bow and besides, I’ve got oodles of spare time.  Honest.

On a more positive note (I’m fairly sure that’s a phrase that I woefully overuse), I defy you not to laugh at this:

p.s. If anyone feels the need to re-write this with pretty punctuation, grammar and spelling then please, be my guest. I’m knackered and can’t think straight. More on that tomorrow though (everything’s ok, don’t worry).

Spiderman

It is the boy’s 3rd birthday tomorrow.  Despite me asking him about a hundred times over the last few weeks he has stuck to his decision to have a spiderman cake.

Now, I don’t object on principle to a spiderman cake.  I would have happily flung some red sugarpaste at a cake and then piped a web onto it.  To get sugarpaste red enough though, I would have had to have bought professional quality icing.  They don’t sell that kind of thing in the supermarket (you can get ready rolled or ready to roll icing in the supermarket but not in strong colours).  I have no objections to paying the price of professional quality icing, but it’s all made in factories that also produce marzipan so I can’t use it in case it triggers a reaction in the boy.  I would have coloured the sugarpaste myself but I’ve tried colouring sugarpaste a strong colour before and it’s a nightmare.  It takes forever and the coloured sugarpaste leaves colour behind wherever you put it.

I’ve covered his cake in coloured buttercream.  It was somehow harder than trying to cover a cake in royal icing (maybe my expectations were too high?) and it is the most uneven messy cake covering I’ve ever done.

I think that next time I’ll just start colouring the icing a week in advance to give it time to settle before I use it.  In fact, I might just make my own sugarpaste and colour it while I’m making it (in my copious free time, of course).

Anyway, here’s this years effort for the boy.  And yes, I know, it needs some tidying up!

Half the Problem

Half the problem with a photo blog is that you’re really stuck for material if you haven’t taken any photo’s for a while, or the ones you have taken are really rubbish.  Still, I’ll plough on anyway.

We went out to eat as a family this evening.  It’s something we don’t do very often any more.  With the boy being prone to keeling over when given the wrong thing to eat, I find it quite stressful.  Pizza Express usually provide a safe haven and as it’s his birthday this weekend we decided a treat was in order.

We were doing ok.  The kids were given pencils and colouring in to do to keep them amused.  Their starter of dough balls and salad went down surprisingly well.

Then it was time for the main course (or “second tea” as the children dubbed it).

One of the things that really infuriates me when we eat out as a family is most restaurant staff’s inability to understand that I want the children’s meals first so that they have time to cool down.  This is not Pizza Express specific, it has happened many times.  I used to make a fuss about getting the kids meals first but now I want the staff to like me so they’re not slapdash with the boy’s meal, so I keep quiet.  I was getting quite irritated though when our meal turned up and theirs didn’t.  Then we got the girl’s pizza, but not the boy’s one.  It turns out that the lovely waitress that seated us, to whom the boy had solemnly recited his piece about having a nut allergy backed up by the girl showing off his “nut allergy pack”, who seemed to take it on board, had neglected to mention the fact to her fellow waiters/waitresses so his pizza had been cut with a pizza wheel that had been used previously on they knew not what.  Putting aside my mild disgust that they were using a utensil that was dirty on my child’s food, I was partly horrified that it was so easy to get it wrong and partly grateful that at least she’d spotted it before it got to our table.  There’s a chance that nothing would have happened, but there’s also a chance that we could have ended up in A&E with a very poorly boy.  On this occassion all that happened was that we had to wait for 10 minutes while they cooked him another pizza.

He’s still, every now and then, having problems with his eyes being itchy and swollen.  I don’t know why.  He woke up wheezy this morning.  I think he’s got a cold but I’m not totally sure as he hasn’t had a runny or blocked up nose today.  We go for weeks and weeks with everything being fine and then a small thing can remind me how precarious his health is.

I try not to feel bitter about it but sometimes it seems so bloody unfair that a small boy who is so energetic, so entertaining, so full of life should have such a huge thing hanging over his head.

And the worse thing for me is that, as his mother, I can’t make it better.

See?  Crap photo.  I warned you.

It’s the Weekend

Taking on the nannying job has given me back my weekend.

Ever since I went on maternity leave with my first born, the husband has been able to work from home at least one day a week and often more.  This has been life saving in many ways but has also had the effect of blurring my days.  There was nothing very different about the weekend.  Yes, the husband was at home, but then he was at home in the week as well.  He worked in his little study, but he often does that at the weekend too.  The children did go to nursery but only twice a week.

Now that I’m working again, and the girl is at school during the week, my weekends have once again become a defined event and it makes such a difference.  Instead of everything just running on day, after day, after day, there is a change every week.  If work isn’t going well there’s the weekend to look forward to, if the kids are driving me nutty over the weekend then there’s always Monday morning and the influx of two more children to dilute my two.  I’m sure I’ll get to a point where it will feel like the same old, same old, week in, week out but then I’ve got half terms and holidays to look forward to as I only work term time.

I was feeling so weekendy this morning that I took the kids to feed the ducks.  They spent most of their time running from one puddle to another and the girl declared they were puddle hunters.  As good a job as any I suppose, provided you’ve got a decent pair of wellies.

And another thing

I thought I’d update you on a few more things that have been happening in our neck of the woods.  These are the (hopefully) one-off type things rather than the things that are going to be long-term.

Many of you will remember that my grandmother was very poorly over the summer.  She finally came home from hospital at the beginning of August but I was very concerned about her ongoing health (physical and mental).  It would seem that in the last few days she has taken a marked upturn – hurrah.  I think we might be out of the woods on this one.  I hope so, I’m not sure my family can take me disappearing off to Somerset every few weeks.

We have found out that the girl is allergic to penicillin.  No huge surprise there but it was quite unpleasant at the time.  Nothing in the boy’s league but a full on attack of urticaria which lasted for several days.  I was out the evening of the day that it happened, babysitting not galivanting I hasten to add, but was concerned enough to make the husband check on her half way through the evening.  I’m a firm believer of the “once they’re asleep, leave well alone” theory so that gives you some idea of my level of concern.

On a much happier note (ooh, look at me go, I ended with one of them yesterday as well), because I haven’t got much on at the moment I decided that we’d throw a party for the ante-natal group that saw me through the girl’s pregnancy and early years.  There were eight couples to start with and we lost two along the way (one moved to Perth, Aus and has come back but not to this area, and one moved away – I’m in touch with them on Facebook but unfortunately they couldn’t make it).  I’m still friends with the other 6 families and the bond that we share, having gone through pregnancy, childbirth and the first five years together is really strong.  I think and hope that these families will be in our lives for a long time to come.

A couple of years ago we had a similar party and I posted about it here. There are photo’s of the girls (all but one of our group were girls) shortly after they were born and a photo we took of them when they were two.

Here they are, last weekend, looking oh so grown up and ready for school.