Update on Tinysaur

The lump is still in her chin - red hot and tender, but the swelling has gone down. I am thinking I might take her back to the doctor tomorrow just to get them to check it out, she has finished her course of antibiotics. It worries me, and while it doesn't overly bother her, if she knocks or bumps it she does seem to react a lot more than to other knocks and bumps.

And now - I'll bore you with updates of my little ratbag...

Temper Tantrums: yup, she is no longer giving things to me when I say "TA" and hold out my hand - she grabs onto it really tight and screams when I take it off her... Tricky times!

Powerpoints: my little sweetie has found out that if she flicks the powerpoint in the hall on and off her Mum will come barrelling around the corner to see what she's doing. I haven't found a way to stop her yet - it has a cover on it, but I am uncomfortable with her flicking it on and off. I tell her No and place her away from it and distract her with toys, but no results have come from that yet...

Dinnertime: Tinysaur is still a massive fan of cheese, although she doens't like custard or yoghurt much anymore. LOVES spinach and broccoli and beans (seems to really like green foods at the moment - when she was little she liked all the orange veges [pumpkin, sweet potato, carrot]). Really likes spag bol with macaroni instead of spaghetti - but the tomato sauce has stained most of her clothes orange... I have tried soaking them, but it doesn't bring out the colour very well.

Sleeptime: seems to be cutting back to 1 nap per day - doesn't really want milk unless she has just got up from a nap - prefers water to go to bed and with her food. Sleeping through the night pretty much every night (has the odd night out every now and then)

Christmas: after all my worries of her pulling the tree over on herself, she has not once pulled on a branch or even worried about the tinsel or chrismtas lights. (although she did eat tinsel initially) She does have a thing for baubles though... And she LOVED driving around looking at the christmas lights the other night - although our town sucks for christmas lights at the moment, there are hardly any around - there were TONS last year.

And that's us up til now!!

I'm back!

It is lovely to see you again. I have been absent the last month or so, because unfortunately we lost our little baby. Our little one stopped growing at about 6 weeks but we did not find out until about 8 weeks when I had some bleeding. I didn't then lose the baby until 9 weeks. It was a very rough time for us.

We had a lot of support from everyone imaginable and I am happy to say I am feeling ok. Olliesaur has really cheered me up through this horrible horrible time and he has been amazingly well behaved. Daddysaur and I are trying again now.

Olliesaur is doing very well and is just learning so so so much!! His new words since I last posted, are train, nappy, fish, Ivy, Ruby (booby!), bubbles, mummy and daddy. He previously only referred to us as mama and dada. He also knows the majority of his body parts now including bellybutton, bum-bum and tickly toes.

We are all ready for Christmas. Olliesaur is definitely more aware this year than in previous years. He has broken 5 baubles on our tree already and keeps trying to pull the tinsel down. He has not yet tried to touch the presents which is strange. I love it when the house is decorated!!

I promise to get back into the swing of blogging now!

Tinysaur sick again

My poor little Tinysaur seems to be sick so often - any Mum out there will know how hard it is when your bub's sick. I think the hardest part is that they can't tell you what they want, or where it hurts, or what makes them feel better.

Last Wednesday I picked Tinysaur up from her carer around lunchtime. She was rather grizzly (but then again, had been for the past week), and her left cheek was bright red. Presuming she was teething, I took her home, gave her Panadol and Bonjela and tried to soothe her. After struggling all afternoon to get her to have an afternoon nap, she finally fell asleep - hot, bothered and overtired at 10pm.

The next morning when she woke up she was NOT in a good mood - crying, clingy, grizzly - you name it!! I gave her some more Panadol, and decided to try to stay at home all day to give her time to relax. It was a good plan, until after her midday nap when I noticed the left side of her face was horribly swollen and had a hot lump in the middle of the swelling. I rang Daddysaur and he came home. We decided we would take her to the doctors that afternoon - so I rang up and booked the next available appointment at 4pm.

We waited agonisingly until 4pm - monitoring the lump, checking it's size. The doctor's surgery wasn't very busy so we went in with only a short wait in the waiting room. It seems my little Tinysaur has an infection in the glands in her neck - but the doctor was uncomfortable sending her home when the swelling was continuing and it could impede her breathing. So we got a Referral onto Accident and Emergency. So off we went.

Accident and Emergency were in peak-hour mode - shift changes, influx of half-dying people, etc but we were shown in to the triage nurse immediately. After taking down the details of the past few days, and checking out the lump she got a doctor in straight away. He wasn't concerned about the location of the lump, and suggested we go home with the Amoxycillin which he prescribed and wait it out.

That was nearly a week ago now. We've been back up to the hospital once since when I thought she was choking in her sleep, but they do not seem to be too concerned about it. The swelling has gone down substantially - but the hard hot lump is still there, despite the course of antibiotics Tinysaur is currently on. Tinysaur has also been on Panadol every day...

If the lump is still there tomorrow (exactly a week since it first arrived) I will re-book a consult with the doctor. The possibility is that the infected gunk won't come out by itself so it might need to be drained, or the first doctor we saw did say it could be some kind of genetic disease where the glands have problems. (?) I can't remember exactly what he called it, but because he was pretty sure it wasn't that he didn't touch to much on it.

Here's hoping it's gone by this week!

Tinysaur's Christmas Tree

Two days ago, my little angel helped me put up her first Christmas tree ever. How exciting it was!! Although she did want to grab all the branches off me, and chewed on half of the little decorations, we had a great time. After carefully arranging all the decorations (I usually just chuck them on every which where, but was DETERMINED to have it perfect this year..) I switched on the Christmas Lights and we both just stared.. Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

That night, all Tinysaur wanted to do was to stare at the lights until she fell asleep... under the Christmas tree. I would have got a picture, but my camera batteries are flat. Kicking myself!

As for development, Tinysaur took a few steps by herself from me to Daddysaur this week - a

bit wobbly, but we continue practising. She is pulling herself up on all the furniture, running amuck, and has discovered a love for cheese. To the point where when she hears the fridge open, she quickly crawls around and sits down on the tiles in front of the door waiting for some cheese. I have to start rationing the cheese out...

And then - in just over a month we will be celebrating Tinysaur's first birthday! How time does fly!!

EDIT: I guess tinysaur must have swallowed some tinsel, cos when I changed her nappy this morning, there was tinsel in her poo.... Anyone else had experiences with children swallowing tinsel? from what I've googled today, it's not dangerous - just a potential choking hazard...

I've been MIA.. For some time!!

Well, back again guys! Wow. So much has happened since I last wrote, that I probably can't even start to fill you all in. And I'll save you the 1000 page essay.

My gorgeous Tinysaur is now a bouncing 10 months old. She can say a handful of words, points, laughs, undoes the velcro straps on her little sandals, pokes her tongue out, throws tantrums. It's wonderful!

She went for her first swim in a big pool yesterday, too! Grandma took her there while I was at work and they floated around in the pool together, enjoying the bubble pit in the kids pool, the mushroom fountain, and the whirpool section. Grandma also forgot to take her camera, so there were no photos for me to giggle and coo over!

It's funny how much they start turning into a little person - Tinysaur loves to dance; wiggling her bottom around in the air. She is still army crawling at this stage, but is VERY close to the actual 'proper' crawl. So far, she has outweighed most kids her age (everyone accuses me of overfeeding her). She is around 11kgs, and I haven't held her still long enough to measure her length! She is, however, the same size as one of my friend's 15 month old.

So that's us up til now - everything in my life focuses on her. I can't wait for Christmas this year - her first Christmas ever! Now's the time to start planning how to keep her away from our Christmas tree!

Squealing Makes My Head Hurt

Olliesaur has learnt how to squeal. It is awful! He has started to do it if he is not getting my attention, if I tell him no-no or if he gets frustrated that he can not get a toy out of his box. Today while Daddysaur and I were grocery shopping, Olliesaur went so over the top I was nearly in tears. I'm stumped as to why he got so frustrated, we had literally been in the store for 5 minutes!

I don't know what I should do with this behaviour. Generally he is so amazingly behaved that I can't understand how I got soooooo lucky. I have a book on my shelf called Toddler Taming by Christopher Green. I think now is the time to start reading it!

Surely it is far too early for the terrible twos? Please tell me the squealing is totally normal and will stop eventually!

The Moment Your Life Changes Forever...

We found out we were pregnant on 6th October 2008. I first took a test at 7am… only to be disappointed at not seeing a line. It was one of those very cheap, “pee in a cup and then dip” type tests. I was about to throw it in the bin only to catch the slightest glimpse of very faint pink, so faint I had to squint to see it… confused as to whether this was something to be excited about, I rushed to show Daddysaur to see what he thought but he was none the wiser. Feeling in a tizzy about things I went to my drawer and took out a digital test I had been saving. The word pregnant flashed up after about 2 minutes of sitting with my fingers crossed tighter than ever. No more confusion over very faint, hardly there pink lines… there it was in plain daylight… no mistaking the one word “Pregnant”.

Me pregnancy went very smoothly apart from a couple of very small bleeds. I didn't even have any sickness!

I went to hospital midday on the 5th June 2008 (after having a disturbed night and a trip to the Maternity Hospital).

First of all I was examined and immediately marked on the chart as being in labour and at 2cm dilated. I had a lovely midwife come in, check all my stats, inform me of my choices of pain relief and she then told me that she was ready to break my waters. WHAT A WEIRD FEELING! It felt like I had wet myself.

I went for as long as I could without pain relief. My contractions were very bad and every 2 minutes. I was moved to one of the delivery rooms and a student midwife introduced herself. She was lovely and made me feel so relaxed. I requested an epidural.

Once the epidural started to take effect I felt fantastic. It was so weird having the strong pressure of the contractions but not the pain I had been feeling the night before and all morning.

At 8.00pm I was ready to push and things all happened very quickly. Before I knew it there were 5 people around the bed and I can't remember why. There was the student midwife, a couple of normal midwives, Daddysaur and a student Dr. (who I might add was a bit strange. He was there a while earlier and for a training Dr. he was very easily embarrassed. He blushed every time I was being examined!).

Pushing was hell! I won’t lie. I was so scared. More than I have ever been in my life, but time passed so fast. The main midwife was yelling at me like she was the commentator at a horse race… “aaaand we see the head, we see the head, just one more push and we will have a baby… come on come on one more push”. Bizarre. I went into shock during the pushing because I really believed at one point I couldn’t do it and I hyperventilated. I don’t remember much more after that. The Dr. was then called for and before I knew it the end was off the bed and I was in the stirrup things instead. The baby’s heartbeat was dropping rather fast and they were worried about him so the Dr. told me she would have to use suction on him. The suction didn’t work so she had to use forceps and also episiotomy. I got very dizzy at this point and with one great big pull from the Dr and a lot of blood, there was my baby on my tummy.

Olliesaur was born at 8.49pm weighing 8lbs 1oz after 10 hours of established labour.

Olliesaur and I spent the first night apart. I can’t remember why but I think I must have looked distressed and exhausted. It really made me miss him and I think this probably helped with us bonding given that labour was a bit traumatic… I missed him and had to pull out my camera to see photos I had taken a while earlier. He was brought back in his little crib at about 5am. I felt so much love the minute I saw him and the love has only increased each day.

Olliesaur is now a 16 month old, walking, talking, SHOUTING, cuddling darling boy who makes me laugh all the time. It is truly amazing how fast the time goes!!

I'm about to do it all again. I am currently 6 weeks and 4 days pregnant. We always said we would like a 2 year age gap between our children so you can't get more precise than being due a baby 5 days after your first born's 2nd birthday!

I am looking forward to sharing everything with you about my stay-at-home, work-at-home (I do blog design, invites and announcements) life with my energetic toddler and the growing baby in my tum.