246 + 142 Weeks

This week we all recovered from our various illnesses, and all the kids have is a lingering cough!!  It is so good to be well again, and have healthy kids.  Carmie is loving school again, and is full of energy and interested in learning.  She is reading like a champ and getting lots of outside time running around and being active.  Her voracious appetite has simmered down and she is eating normally again, but her tastes have completely changed and she likes different food, with a newfound love of tomatoes.  Arley is still seriously grumpy, but I have been giving him lots of talks about being happy and smiling and being nice to people (especially his dad), and I think there might be a little improvement.  They have told me at school that he is really cranky and they haven't seen him smile in weeks, but today he was a little better.  Over the weekend, he decided for three days that he didn't want to wear a nappy any more, he insisted on wearing underpants.  So, we started potty training.  He only had one accident on the first two days, but that is because he spent hours on end sitting on the toilet with the iPad (I couldn't get him to sit on it any other way, and then he started fibbing about how he needed to do a poo so he could watch the iPad).  On the third day, I wizened up, but he had three accidents.  What made me cross was the fact that he didn't tell me about them, he just sat there in his wet pants and continued on with his day.  One time he was right next to me while I read books to him for half an hour and he peed himself and I didn't know. :(  So, he was back in nappies for the week, but I think we are going to start potty training tomorrow and put in a good effort over the Easter break.

We had a great weekend.  Jeff was working on Saturday, so it was just me and the kids.  We started out with a trip to our neighbourhood park, lots of running around and climbing, before heading home for morning tea.  The kids actually played all day outside on Saturday, keeping themselves occupied while I got some gardening done.  This is the first time they have ever done this, and it was for hours.  When I asked Carmie to come inside when I had to make dinner, she even chose to stay outside by herself to play some more.  This is how I know that she is better, and just how sick she actually was, because it was impossible to get her to play outside before. 

We took the kids out to dinner with their Lolo and Dida on Wednesday night.  It was our first family dinner out, and a remarkable success.  We decided to do it because we had been taking the kids to the Golf Club and they had seen all of the massive Easter baskets on display, ready for the Easter raffle.  Carmie would beg to go so she could see the baskets.  So, we took them to dinner at the Golfy for the raffle, and we all bought tickets.  There were 29000 tickets sold, and we had about 100 between us, and there were 78 baskets to be won.  Believe it or not, Lolo had a winning ticket!  Carmie and Arley got to go up and choose an Easter basket, and they were SO excited.  They chose a wagon full of eggs with some megablocks and a bunny, and then proceeded to parade the wagon around the restaurant for all to see.  It was very cute, and now I have to break the news to them that prizes don't come with every family dinner out at a restaurant!

Carmie and Arley have been having a lot of fun with their karaoke machine, and have also been having 'discos' in Carmie's room (thanks for the disco ball, Oma and Opa!). They are so funny, very cute, and will hate me one day for the following video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgcydibpL_M&feature=youtu.be

Fun at the park.

 Lunch at the Golfy.

 Sporting their Easter bunny ears.

 At the Golfy for our Easter raffle dinner, meeting the Easter bunny.

 Just won their prize

Before school this morning.

245 + 141 Weeks

This past weekend I was horribly sick with what I believe was the worst cold I have ever had.  I still have a sinus infection from it now, a week later.  It made for a pretty awful weekend for me, as the kids didn't give me a minute of rest.  Jeff could keep Carmie entertained fairly well, but Arley only wants me at the moment, and he pretty much needs to have me in his sight and engaged.  I had a major meltdown on Friday night at bath time when the kids were being naughty and I completely lost the plot.  It seems they forgave me though, and Carmie made me a get well soon card and wrapped up her sticker collection and gave it to me as a present.  We got the kids to the pirate ship park on Saturday, which was nice, as Carmie has this horrible aversion to being outside (ever since she got sick), but she is alright at the park.  She won't step foot outside at our place or at the farm, and was miserable outside at school.  On Sunday we went to the farm for lunch with Lolo and Dida, which the kids loved.  Carmie says, "I can't wait to get spoiled!" before she goes.

So, the kids went off to school on Tuesday, and Carmie was full of energy again, a different girl to before, and she had a good time.  I finally got the results back from the doctor, and we were right, she did have giardia, the poor thing.  It's no wonder she felt poorly, I think she actually had it for months :(  Anyway, on Wednesday morning, Arley woke up in a massive tantrum, and he was burning up, so I took his temperature and he had a fever.  Another sick kid home from school.  Carmie went on her own to school (oh the drama!!), but by the end of the day, they had called us to say she also had a fever and headache.  So, Thursday, once again, we had two sick kids home from school.  Thankfully they went to the farm so I could still work.  But I tell you what, I am 100% completely and utterly over having sick children, and being sick myself!!

Arley has been so grumpy this week.  I am hoping it is all down to him feeling under the weather.  Whatever you ask him to do (even if it is something he desperately wants), he scrunches up his face and says, "No, I don't want to!" while he hits whatever inanimate object is closest to him.  He is nasty to his dad, and pretty much has a mini tantrum about 20 times a day.  Nothing is easy, not nappy changes (God forbid he goes to the toilet to poo, he would prefer to go to his room and hide to do it), not brushing his teeth, not meal times, nothing.  And now that Carmie has her energy back, she is bouncing off the walls like a rubber ball.  And still eating like a horse - tonight she ate three pieces of pizza, the same as her dad!

Please please please can we all be well and happy next week??

244 + 140 Weeks

Super fun times!  It seems that these posts just get more and more negative.  On Friday (seven days ago now),  I kept Arley home from school because his cough was really bad, and I was keeping Carmie home anyway because she was still so sick and had lost so much weight.  I determined that I wasn't going to wait for her stool sample results and was going to demand antibiotics (luckily, as I have just called them and they still don't have the results!!).  So I took Carmie to the doctor and I took Arley too, and after waiting for 45 minutes in the waiting room (really fun with two kids), we got in to see the doctor, who weighed Carmie and thought he'd better call the paediatrician, who of course told him to put her on antibiotics (I hate doctors!)  And then he told me, "Oh, by the way, your son has croup".  But he wouldn't give me a prescription for Arley because it wasn't his appointment, he told me I had to go out and sign him up for his own appointment.  I was so mad, I practically begged him, but the doctor said it wasn't fair for everyone else in the waiting room (who I am sure would have gladly given an extra five minutes of waiting to get my two out of their hair!).  Anyway, it was a no go, so I booked Arley in for a 4 o'clock appointment, and then walked the kids across the arcade to the pharmacy.  They told me it was a 20 minute wait, so I took the kids to a cafe, and all Carmie wanted was a milkshake.  So, I let the kids split a milkshake, against my better judgement.  I then took them back to the pharmacy, but there was another 20 minute wait, which was really fun with Arley tantrumming and screaming because I wouldn't let him eat the laxatives that he was pulling off the shelves and throwing on the floor.  Poor Carmie was as white as a ghost and wilting over against the wall.  I finally got her medication, and had the bright idea of going back across to the medical clinic to see if the doctor could see Arley, and they told me that  if I wanted to wait 15 minutes, they could get him in next.  So I did.  25 minutes later I was walking out of the jerk doctor's office with a script for Arley.  So then I had to go back to the pharmacy with two sick children and wait for Arley's medicine, all the while feeling guilty that I had sent Arley to school all week even though he had been sick too.  I finally got the kids home (it was a three hour doctor's visit, and the clinic is literally five minutes away!), and I got Arley medicated and in bed.  Then I put Carmie on the couch to rest, gave her a dose of medicine, and she threw up copious amounts of food and  milkshake, all over our sofa, from one end to the other.  As I said, super fun times.

Now that Carmie is over her tummy bug, whatever it was, she is eating unbelievable amounts of food.  I am trying to tell myself that it is just because she is making up for lost calories and nutrition, but it seems quite abnormal.  She will eat two eggs, a potato, vegetarian bacon, cheese and buttered toast for breakfast, followed by a cookie and an apple, and then beg for more buttered toast.  She has been eating about 10 slices of buttered toast a day.  We have finally told her no more buttered toast, except for as a part of a meal.  It almost seems like she has lost the ability to feel full.  We are a little worried about her food intake, because it really is astronomical, but it is hard to do any research when they can't even tell me what was wrong with her in the first place.  In the meantime, we are at least trying to steer her on a path of choosing healthy foods, but she really wants to eat buttered toast and buttered pasta, and eggs, all day long.  She is eating about three times the amount of food as she did before she got sick.

Carmie started to get better after 24 hours, and had one day where she was feeling well enough to go to the park with her dad and Arley.  And then on Monday she came down with Arley's virus and croup.  So she missed school on Tuesday again, and then I sent her off to school for the rest of the week, full of steroids and with my fingers crossed.  And now I am sick as a dog with the virus.  I figure it is my punishment for sending Arley to school sick, and Carmie this week too.  She is still miserable there, and I am hoping it is just from being so sick and not having her energy levels up and missing me too much, because if her dislike of her school continues much longer I am not sure what I am going to do.  And Arley is being a little two year old monster lately.  I have to forgive him, as he is only two and obviously going through a lot, but he is really pushing the limits.

The photos below are super smiley and happy, so I guess we have had some nice times too.  Before Carmie got sick again with croup, I took the kids for a library visit, which they loved.  They were so well behaved that I decided to walk them across the road to the bakery for a treat, and they sat like little messy grown ups and ate their sticky finger bun.  It gave me hope that it is possible for these little guys to leave the house without much drama, and for us to enjoy ourselves.

A rare sight, Arley sitting with Dad, so I had to take a photo!

A quiet trip to the farm

At the park with Dad

At the library

Bakery - yum.