Julia 28 months | Sarah 14 months | TJ 28 months | Nikki almost 14 months

December 2007

Saturday 8/12/07 - Sarah slowly started to get happier this week and begin eating a little better, but yesterday morning began crying and coughing blood – she’d been reading books quietly, so couldn’t have swallowed anything new. I shoved my finger down her throat and felt something and made her vomit, and she finally vomited up the dreadful star in a heap of blood. Poor thing. After half an hour of cuddles and reading books thereafter, she has just been transformed, she was back to eating hard things and a really cheerful little soul, full of smiles and mischief. I thought they’d checked her throat in hospital, but Mark said they never did as she was too upset, they just sent her for xrays. Poor thing, it may have been lodged that entire time just at the back of her mouth/tongue. How uncomfortable, and it was so sharp.

Julia is doing well. Some days as good as gold, and some days testing us and saying no to everything all day long.

Mark is working hard. Just put in a job application for a new job at a higher level at Graylands. He is also applying for grant money through his current work, to move up to the next level, dropping down to OT part time, and IT part time for some sort of specific project (which he has already been working on anyway, but which can now fit into some new funding allocation). He will work out what he wants to do, in the new year, depending on the responses he gets from each.

He had a LAN last weekend, so as usual got a total of about 4-5 hours sleep over the ENTIRE weekend, and spent Sunday afternoon and the rest of the week recovering. It was a bit of a dud, as Daniel was hardly there is he was too tired with his baby Leah up still a little at night, and then Brendan was called to work all night Friday night, and called home by Bron as Rosalie was messing around in her high chair, as soon as he had returned, and then he never made it back.

There are 8 babies due March-May next year at our monthly Catholic Homeschooling group (out of about 15-20 families).

Council just approved our house plans at mum and dad’s after mum wrote a long explanation letter, as they weren’t impressed with the size of the ‘Granny Flat’. She explained it was half extension (they have a fairly small house in comparison with the rest of the area of 1 acre blocks at the moment) and partly granny flat.

I’ve been working slowly on the garden here, and so it’s beginning to look nice. The back garden grass is quite lush and green and deweeded.

Glenn (our friend who’d been in hospital since March waiting for a new liver) is home and very well, and having a ‘life’ party on Sunday for all friends and family to thanks them for praying for him. He was managing to stay alive (though hallucinating) with the highest levels of toxins ever recorded in the world in history (from his packed up liver). They will have to rewrite the manuals. He was very bloated and dark, dark yellow by the time he received a liver from New Zealand.

We will be unable to attend as Mark is playing at Mass and then we’d replied long ago to go to Carols Brendan and Bronwynne are having at their house in the afternoon. Mark practised here last night with another guy who has joined him for Mass, and they really sounded nice, and seem to get on well.

Reeze is still vomiting every day, but has managed to start her new job anyway. Hopefully she’ll be a little better by the end of the month and in time for bill’s wedding Jan 5th. She is almost 10 weeks now.

Mark is off to Joe and Nibby’s for the day and possibly to visit Pete and Ronnie too, with the girls, as I’m doing some scrapbooking.

Must go, girls are up, Sarah seems to have diarrhoea and has pooed through everything and needs a shower.

13/12/07 – Sarah’s vocab must be about 30 words.

Saturday 15/12/07 –

Grandpa Big Bob Died

Grandpa Big Bob dies while getting up for a minute during a Chess game with dad. A very nice quick death, in the company of two of his sons and his wife, doing what he loved.

Grandpa Jim arrives in the evening from New Zealand.

Teresa has a scan that puts her at 10.5 weeks pregnancy. By dates she is almost 11 weeks. She has her routine down pat. Wake up late (8.30 ish), have breakfast in bed, get up, puke, go to work by 9.30am (she walks to work which is excellent), have morning tea mid morning, puke 15 minutes later on her morning tea break, eat lunch and then dinner, which she manages to keep down. She is quite amazed at how tired she gets.

I am therefore 26 weeks and feeling quite huge, kicks are very often and getting quite pokey and into my bladder already and I still have 3 months to go!

Sunday 16/12/07 – Bill & Carly have a combined Hen’s / Bucks party at a laser shooting game out in the swan valley. A great time is had by all, except that Bill manages to lose HIS engagement ring – a fancy ring of 3 different feeling white gold bands with a diamond on it. Carly is pretty devastated as they were hoping to fuse it to his plain gold wedding band.

Tuesday 18/12/07 – Viewing of Grandpa. It was lovely to see so many of the family there. Wonderful to see grandpa so peaceful, though very pale.

Thursday 20/12/07 – Grandpa’s funeral at Wanneroo Church, burial at Pinaroo cemetery, a lovely natural ‘bush’ cemetery near Whitfords, wake at Uncle Bob’s in Duncraig.

Saturday 22/12/07 – Granny Di arrives mid afternoon, from New Zealand, for Christmas and Bill’s wedding.

Tuesday 25/12/07 –

Christmas

Lunch at Grandpa PG’s and Granny Darrell’s, dinner at Joe & Nibby’s.

28/12/07 – Granny Di, Amanda, TJ, Nikki, Julia, Sarah and I go to the Cuddly Animal Farm in the Swan Valley while the boys (Grandpa Jim, Tim, Bill, Mark and Carly) get a metal detector and go to try to find Bill’s Engagement ring. It was a cooler day (about 34), but still stinking hot! The metal detector picks up ever rock around, but now ring, and then runs out of batteries. We meet for picnic lunch at the animal farm. The kids are pooped and hot, but enjoyed their day I think. They jumped on a jumping castle, went on a little tractor-train, theoretically fed the lambs their bottle, but realistically got scared at the ferocious pace and sucking strength of the lambs and so it was actually Amanda and I that fed the lambs while the older two whinged for their bottle and the younger two kept trying to get down the cuddle the lambs (which were bigger than them). They fed the rabbits and cuddled them. Sarah enjoyed having piglets suck her fingers, and ever other animal. She spent her time with her fingers through the cage wires, or trying to climb in. Julia liked the goat, and it likes to chew her hat. They enjoyed seeing a talking parrot, colourful African birds, chicks, chickens, roosters, turkeys, a lama, cows, goat, horses, emu and hampster things.

January 2008

1/1/08 – We had a lazy New Year’s evening at home, all feeling worn out.

3/1/08 – Sarah must have got her first eye tooth around now (top right)

Saturday 5/1/08 –

Bill & Carly’s wedding.

A lovely simple wedding. Mark was best man and did a good job, his speech was really good. The whole bridal party looked beautiful.

10/1/08 – Sarah gets her second eye tooth. (10^th tooth in total).

Julia is potty trained.

This time took 2 days where she wouldn’t go near the potty, until I thought of old stickers I had a bribes. After that we had about 3-5 accidents over the next 3 or so days, and then she was brilliant. She has missed her cue at mum’s once while playing. She wakes up often and tells us she wants to go potty and takes her nappy off to do it in there instead of in her nappy, and sometimes asks to get out of the pool to do her wee, other times just announces to all the other swimmers that she is doing one. Her poos took a week or so longer. She was happy to do them in her undies, so I just left her in baggy pants or nothing if it was hot, and so she has been doing them in the potty too. Woohoo. She still wears a nappy for nap time and overnight. One day I’ll work on naptime, at the moment I’m too tired to hop up from a nap to go wipe her bum and prefer trying to entice her to stay quiet and cuddled up to me so that I can rest a little longer, and if Sarah’s still asleep, so that she can sleep a little longer too.

11/1/08 – Tim sold 2 houses this morning – WAY TO GO. He really seems to be in the swing of things now.

12/1/08 – Began teaching Julia the letter A this week with many activities, bible verse, song, colouring, painting etc. Unbeknown to me, Sarah can now recognise the letter A in any text and say A, and when asked it’s sound or shown a baby ‘a’ say the short a sound, as well as point out and demand apples. Julia is pretty good at recognising different a’s from different fonts, and excitedly showing me the letter A in anything we see written.

Granny Di returned to New Zealand this afternoon.

13/1/08 – Sarah is a bit sick, with tremendous diarrhoea the past few day, not eating much and pooing about 10-12 times a day.

Sarah’s mushrooming vocab

Sarah’s vocab is far too large for me to even try to remember and list any more. Words like dog, cat, car, apple, banana, truck, moon, sore, plaster, bottle, hair, teddy, ball, bath, shower, flower, out, down, birdie, book, hand, nyumnyum (for food), milk, nappy, bum, potty (she watches Julia intently on the potty), teeth (she loves brushing her teeth), pool (they both love swimming), baby, barbie, dolly, breakfast, daddy, mum, grandpa (boppa), Nikki, TJ, occasionally something like Julia, cheese. She spouts new words every day and copies anything we say that she hasn’t learnt yet. It’s really unnerving, as Julia only really began to say about 10 words by 18 months old. Sarah likes doing actions to a bunch of nursery rhymes and songs too, that I would never have bothered with with Julia at this age I don’t think.

Julia is so helpful, usually polite and with such a large understanding. We woke from naps one day this week, and their empty bottles from going to sleep were on the floor. I asked Sarah to bring then to me and told Julia I’d put them in the sink later (often I ask Julia to put them in the sink for me) as Julia was still very tired and trying to go back to sleep, but she hopped up and got the bottles and took them to the sink. I asked her what she was doing and she said, “Putting yucky bottles in the sink so Sarah doesn’t drink them”. I asked her why and she said,”Julia help mum”. Wow, to do it without being asked and just to help me – what an amazing feeling that was. She’s very helpful helping me hang washing and get it down (lifting the washing piece by piece up for me (she shakes it out too and names each piece of clothing and who it belongs to – a bra has finally stopped being called boobs), which is lovely now my belly is getting a little uncomfortable. She’s so good at packing up their toys and picking up after Sarah. She’s very good at sharing with Sarah too. I was amazed yesterday at Sarah sharing the bottle I’d just given her to Julia upon request, without knowing that she would be given another one. Their minds are growing. They love riding on their tricycles given for Christmas. Julia can pedal it a little, but they have handles that can steer them which makes it a breeze. Julia says ballamoon for balloon, and bicleil for bicycle which is pretty amusing.

Mark accepted a new job this week, beginning to transfer/handover from Monday and then permanently in the new position (a level higher) from 29/1/08.

14/1/08 – Pregnancy 30 weeks today. Baby doesn’t ever seem to stop kicking. Julia asks to feel the kicks often, tells Sarah to watch out for my tummy when they’re climbing all over the bed, and kisses it better if I groan cause either of them have poked a knee or something into it. She often asks to cuddle mum’s baby when it pops out, and also aunty Reeze’s baby. Last week she asked my ‘HOW’ the baby was going to pop out. I just said it will come out when mum goes to hospital. She’s very comfortable with us going there for the baby’s checkups every now and again.

19/1/08 – Grandpa Jim due to return to New Zealand.

27/1/08 – Soiree at the Berry’s.

29/1/08 –