Liams visit to hospital

Warning this is very long post...again for my record of journalling for future pages.

The night before Liams op I thought it would take awhile for him to go to sleep as all day he had been asking me lots of questions about it. But he didnt fuss much at all when it came to bed time and went to sleep lying across his bed with Blue Piggy close by.

We had a early start with Liam not being allowed to eat after 7am, so i set 3 alarm clocks, one for 6am, 6.10 and 6.15am(yip you did read that right 3 one in Liams room and the one in mine and the one on my mobile phone in my room) jsut to make sure there was at least one that woke me up. As it turned out I didnt need any of them as I didnt have a very good night sleep and was awake on and off from 2am and by 5.30 i was wide awake so got up turned the computer on and did some interneting for a little bit before Liam woke up at 5.52am. Since we were up early I thought I would get a photo of the sun rise, it was a very bright yellow, although it doesnt show very well up on this photo...but proof that I can get up before the sun if i have to,lol.

Stevne went down to his dads at about 8.30 as Liam was getting hungry(already)and Stevne was wanting to eat, so we took him down there so that I could get liam to focus on somethign other than his hungry tummy. Before going to the hospital we went over to the warehouse to buy the dvd Up for the boys and get some up& go drinks for liam for after the op. Mum took us up to the hospital and we got there with lots of time to spare. Waited in the car for about 15 mintues before going up....LIam asked all his questions over while we waited. It didnt take to long from when we arrived in the waiting room till Liams name was called out by the nurse. We went into a small room of the next waiting area. The nurse checked that all the details were correct, weight Liam and then gave him some pamol. Put on his name bracelet and also an extra red one to say he is allergic to Augmentin.

Got him a gown to put on and then put cream to numb his skin with plaster over the top of it.

Then we had to wait for the anaesthetist and doctor to come and talk about the operationa nd what was going to happen. Between the nurse doing her bits and pieces and talking to the doctor Liam had me worried for a while. ONce the nurse had put the cream on he went very quiet, Im sure it was just his nerves getting the better of him but he curled up into me and almost went to sleep. He started to get the shakes in his hands and started to sweat, I said to mum he looks like how i feel jsut before im going to faint. We were told we could move out into the waitnig area so Liam could play with the toys, but he honestly wasnt in the mood for it and was still very cuddly with me. After about 15 mintues the anaesthetist and doctor talked with us and then another nurse came in and check Liams details once more before taking us to the operating theatre. By this stage Liam was chatty again and talking away to everyone. He was very brave and doing so well when we walked into the operation theatre, I was a little nervous when walking into a room with about 6 people in there. They were all very friendly and said hello to Liam. We lifted him up onto the bed and put the blanket onto him and then it was explained to him about the mask to help him go to sleep and he was fine with it all. I took his glasses off and they put the mask onto his face, he took one breath and then he started to scream. Right up to this point I had told myself I would not cry, well that jsut went out the window and he was not keen for this mask business at all. So they asked if it was okay with me for them to jsut hold it on and get it over with, to which i agreed to. I can tell you now its hard to see this happening and when he was looking up at me with those tears in his eyes I pretty much got tears in my eyes as well. I was told that this is for his own good and it needs to be done with having so much tonsillitis in such a short time and that once he woke up he wont remember this happening, and I know they are right I have told myself this over and over but it still hard to see your own child in that state. Once he was asleep I gave him a kiss and told him I loved him and got shown back to the waiting room. It was about an hour before a nurse came out and called me in, mum was able to come in also and wait in a different part of the recovery area. He was so anrgy looking when i saw him and in alot of pain. They had given him quite a bit of different pain relief and asked if I was happy for him to have morphine as he was still in a lot of pain. He does in and out of sleep while watching inspector gaget on a portable dvd player. After about half an hour he asked if he could have some food and then burst into tears. So off down to the wards we went so he could have an iceblock and some jelly. We were now here for 4 hours but with kidzone on the tv Liam was more than happy to lie in bed sipping away at his water. Mum went down tot he chemist and got liam lot of meds for him before it closed. At about 6pm the doctor came in and told us that the operation was straight forward, that Liam had small tonsils but they were very scared for his age. 6.30pm and we could go home, gave him some pamol before we left and then headed home.


Plaster where the lure was in

Once home Liam had his next lot of pain meds at 10.30pm then I headed of to bed with Liam in my bed so I could keep and eye on him we both slept very well but didnt wake at 2.30am wehn he needed more meds, so by 7.30 when we did wake he was quite sore. I felt quite bad about it but gave him meds and the difflam spray which helped alot. That morning he had a 2hr sleep on my bed.

I drew up a timetable so I knew which meds I was giving him and at what time. For the next couple of days it was meds every 4 hours and spray every couple of hours or when needed. This photo is Liam who fell asleep on his bed after not taking his meds and he was in pain I could tell but he wouldnt take it and went to sleep like this after crying...I just let him sleep for a couple of hours and then woke him at 9.30pm. He asked for the spray as well so he was hurting bad by this stage, I set alarm to make sure I woke in 4 hours.

Saturday night was Liams first night of no pain meds after 7.30pm which was great and we both had a very good sleep.

He has had a couple lots of meds today but not much and is starting to eat a bit more and drink lots more as well. I think his jaw is giving him more grief than his throat at the moment but we were told that was to be expected, but he is on the mend and is dealing with it alot better than I thought he would. Steven is a bit out of sorts with Liam having to keep quite for a few weeks and Steven missing his trampoline buddy but slowly accepting thats jsut the way things are at the moment. So now we look forward to a year with a healthier Liam.

Will be getting photos developed tomorrow to get a mini album made so watch this space. Also I will be back soon with a gerneal post about whats been happening around here, with photos of my project life kit some photos of my Daily December album and photos of 365 project that I did last year.

PS. Spell check isnt working and because its late im sure there is more than one mistake, I will come back tomorrow to see if i can get spell check to work...so sorry for all the mistakes

this little hippo

or this little piggy as he is called, has gone missing. Before I get to much into this post I will warn you its long...mainly because it will be my journalling for a couple of layouts i want to do but don't know when I will do them so want to have the journalling recorded.

A couple of years ago at the special children Xmas party Steven got this big yellow hippo(those of you who follow my blog will know who i mean and have seen many photos of this big yellow hippo who is called Piggy). Liam had a small cute grey hippo which he adopted as his a couple of years ago before Piggy came along. Liam then started to call his hippo little piggy(of course cause what else would you call a hippo). Little Piggy has been with us since Steven was 9months old from his first visit to Auckland Zoo.

Little Piggy did lots of things with Liam and helped to get Liam to adjust when he had to have his eye patched not long after starting afternoon kindy and getting glasses. Every day before Liam got his patch Little Piggy would have his eye patched first and a couple of times went along with kindy to show the teachers that they both patched their eyes. There were a couple of days where Little Piggy was naughty at putting his patch on and Liam decided that he had to wear that patch for longer,lol.

There were days that Steven let Liam borrow Piggy for the day which Liam really enjoyed.

And Liam would also take some of his soft toy friends into my bed and line them up with his baby blanket i made him to tuck them in.


This is the last photo of Little Piggy, which was taken on Xmas day last year out side the boys dads house....Liam had gone to sleep in the car on the way home from our Xmas day at my mums holding onto Little Piggy.

The boys were at their dads for a week but Little Piggy never came home. Not sure what happened and where Little Piggy went but we had a few night of tears once Liam was home. He wanted to take Little Piggy to the hospital with him when he got his tonsils out...so we had two weeks to either find Little Piggy or buy a new Piggy. I started my search for a new Piggy......little did i know that not many shops have hippo toys. I thought that the warehouse was bound to have something suitable, but nope not a single hippo in site...so as last resort on the Friday before Liam's op we went into town and got a couple more books bout hospital out of the library and then went to Love to Learn to see what they had in the way of soft toys....we walked in and Liam saw a little blue hippo, he was muched loved and adopted by Liam straight away. So this is Liam new friend Blue Piggy....I personally liked Little Piggy better but Blue Piggy is cute and Liam loves him and that's what matters.

Tomorrow I will post about Liam and Blue Piggy's visit to the Hospital

Another layout

using the Paper Pesto monthly kit, other than the butterfly and thread for stitching everything else is from the kit. I really like how this page has come together. The chipboard butterfly had crackle paint which I love the affect of once it has dried. I'm loving hand stitching at the moment and did a bit on the machine for this layout as well.



The boys are away with their dad for two nights again this weekend and while I do enjoy having that extra night I do miss them when they are not here and I miss our Sunday mornings at home not having to get up and go anywhere. But since he is off to America for a month I am making the most of the breaks I get before he goes away and they don't have their Friday nights with their dad......Steven finds the extra night a bit hard to deal with in that its a change from whats normal but he loves his time away and I love when they come home and give me big hugs and tell me they love and missed me.

Liam is doing REALLY, REALLY WELL at school and had a test yesterday(and if you know the name of the test let me know I was told but I cant for the life of me remember-it was maths reading and spelling all that sort of stuff to see what level he is at)and the teacher who took the test told me I should be very proud of Liam as hes a very smart young man. In many ways hes too smart for his own good,LOL.....His class teacher has also said to me in the past that he is very good at his maths and spelling. he is one of the youngest in his class and he does do really well for himself, he does however need to remember when he needs help to ask his teacher for help which he wont do and even at home if he is stuck with something he tends to sit and just wait for me to notice he needs help or he will continue and get him self annoyed and frustrated because he cant work it out himself instead of just asking for me to help him. I do think its good to a point that he wants to do things himself and work things out but he needs to learn that there is a point where he needs to ask for help and that its okay to need to ask for help. So I'm very proud of Liam and I think its great that he is doing so well and above his age level in most areas.

Steven is also doing really well at school and is now getting into doing most of his school work. After weeks of Steven not writing his homework into his book or even doing his homework I suggest to his teacher that letting Steven type it on computer and print it out might help and encourage him to do his work. So Monday he let Steven type his homework list out and print it off and glue it into his book and Steven did it no fuss, YAY....so through out the week Steven has had more computer time to do some of his work, like story writing which Steven totally hates but with the use of computer he is happy to type you a whole book, lol. And for years now I have asked the school for Steven to have more use of the computer to do his work because at the end of the day he is not a typical child and you need to try different things with him to encourage him to do his work. he is still doing story writing but he is typing instead of writing BUT to me its the same as he still needs to think about what he wants to type and hey at the end of the day if it means he will actually do his work instead of flat out refusing to do any work all day then let him use the computer I say. So YAY for his teacher willing to give this a try and see that it works for Steven. Looks like another great year for Steven at school.

Well thats all from me for now Im off to scrapbook my next few nights/day away,lol....have a good weekend everyone and hope we still have this lovely sunny weather for a few more days.

WARNING..nail less toe picture follows.....

....LOL, just thought I would give you a warning in case you have sat down to check your blog lines with nice cuppa tea and cake, cause this picture probably put you off eating anything. Anyway while away at his dads Liam's toe nail has finally come of which is great. After months of taping his toe during school time and then at night its good to finally be rid of it. The look of the toe now isn't all that nice I must say but alt least now the new nail has room to grow.

Oh would you look at this mess.....this is the state of the sleep out at the moment. Not good is it although there is a small trail through the middle so you can(believe it or not) get in there. When we moved just over 3 years ago we moved from a big 4 bedroom house, large laundry area, lounge and separate dining area, double garage and nice size section into this small 3 bedroom(well I would say more 2 bedrooms plus an office because the bathroom is bigger than Steven's room, sad ah) house with lounge/kitchen/dining area in total the size of just the lounge at the old house but this place has a sleep out. So anything that didn't fit in the house went straight to the sleep out and there are still boxes there that haven't been unpacked. So how badly do we need all this stuff if it can be in a box for years on end and I don't miss it? Well I have decided that trade me is my friend,LOL and I have managed to have a good fun at the moment with selling stuff on there. So my mission(should I accept it.....LOL) is when the boys go back to school I'm going to get down into that sleep out and get it sorted. At the moment i have a box for trade me items that are listed and a huge box that I need to sort through what I will list and what I will just give away. I have now got some draws down there and I will move all the trade me stuff into these. There are extra toys for the boys that are just too big for the house like the play shopping kitchen you can see in the photo and this will stay in sleep out as the plan is to get the place sorted and set up as extra play area for the boys. I'm guessing this will take a good couple of days but in the long run it will be well worth it and I'm sure the boys will enjoy an extra play area.

Photos

Liam told me he had made breakfast....thoughts of the kitchen being a bombsite went through my head. But what he really meant was that he got the breakfast stuff out ready for me to make the breakfast. It was very nice of him or it was his way of saying can you get out of bed I'm hungry,LOL.

And look what arrived in the post today. I decided that I would be cheaper (and easier) to get all the weeks of for the 365 project printed as photos rather than use my ink and paper. So now I have photos all ready, journalling is up to date on the computer waiting for me to get ink next week and then print them off. So once the pages arrive I will be all set to put everything into them. So tonight I sat down and corner rounded all my photos for the 365 project including the week of ones.......and I have decided there are far to many corners,LOL

Todays photo

Liam had an appointment at the super clinic for his 6 monthly eye test. His eye is still a bit lazy in that it wont focus on things as they get closer to his face, but as far as his sight goes its great so he has been discharged now. So now I only have to go up every 6 months for Stevens hearing test which is on the 22nd of this month. So i thought i would carry the cmera around with me just in case i wanted to snap a photo of something while im out. So I got a photo of the superclinic building and Liam in the back seat of the car, worried because every time we go they patch his eye again for testing the sight in each eye and he really hates the patching. I dont blame him really for a year he had to have his good eye patched for 4 hours per day to get the bad eye working, but all the effort paid of and his he has great vision in his eye again as before the patching he could hardly see a metre infront of him. I was quite shocked and felt really bad as for a few months before the eye testing they do at kindy he said his eyes were sick and i didnt believe him and thought he was just trying to get some pamol(he loves pamol and most nights he has a sore leg or sore something but it was always at bed time). So sure enough he really did have a sick eye and i felt soo bad for not thinking about his sight.

I love summer

but it was so hot and muggy today and so now I'm looking forward to winter. Summer there is only so many clothes you can take off before you scare people, at least with winter you can always put on another layer,LOL. So after a long hot day the boys and i headed up to the school pool for a swim. I decide to get a key this year so that i can get Liam in the water without having a class full of kids in the pool with him. Already i can see he has gain alot of confidence and is walking around by himself and putting his face under a little bit at a time(I know alot of kids are way beyond these stages but for Liam they are HUGE). We were up at the pool for over an hour and it was so nice, lovely and warm might have to get myself some sunglasses though cause the sun on the water was not so nice. So here is today's picture for my 365 album....Liam crashes after long day big swim and then home for bath and then into bed over an hour after his normal bed time and within 5 minutes he was asleep.

IM BACK

I's been about 3 weeks since my computer decided to die...lucky it was just the motherboard that was fried and not the hard drive. I was stressing there for a bit that i had lost 3years worth of photos that have not been saved to disk.......but they were okay and i have got some Cd's to back them up and will get more tomorrow so over the next few days i will be busy sorting photos onto CD. My brother gave me the use of his computer over that time while mine was getting sorted and then he came in yesterday and got mine up and running for me. So here I am...i do have a few photos to share but want to get photos and journalling for some layouts i have done finished. I have been reading every ones blogs but while on my brothers computer it wouldn't let me post comments for some reason.

Anyway enjoying today's lovely weather and was up nice and early this morning and managed to get a couple loads of washing done through the dishes into dishwasher and got them done(didn't do them last night cause i had INTERNET lol which i have not had computer or Internet since last Thursday...yes the Internet is an addiction just like scrapbooking).

Liam got sent home about 5 worksheets of maths to do for home work over this week....he only has to do one pages per night, but once he started he didn't want to stop, he really enjoys his maths. He surprised me a bit with how well he can do it and alot of the problems he just writes the answer down no problem at all. So he ended up doing nearly 3 pages of the 5 last night....and then you have Steven who would never do more homework than he needs too,LOL. Steven is back to bringing his school work home to do as he is refusing to do it at school. Its just story writing which he hates doing. Mondays they have to write about what they did in the weekend...I personally think for Steven he hates doing story writing because he knows what he did in the weekend so why would he need to write about it. And he sits there and he says i don't know what to write and you give him ideas and he says he not want to write that. And then when he does write something he makes the sentence as short as he can. One sentence was 'I got a Ben 10 book'. I said to him to write i got a Ben 10 book because.....(he got it for doing good homework last week), he replies with i already know that. So i have tried to explain to him that who ever is reading his story doesn't know that and you need to write it down so they know why you got that book. He can be so frustrating because I know he can do it he has written a whole page about his weekend before, hes just soooooo stubborn sometimes and flat out refuses to do the work. But then i think how frustrating our world must seem to him and he does do his best and he is doing well in all other areas at school so that's great.

Not sure if there are any fans of the programme House of Tiny Tearaways out there but i really enjoy this programme as Tanya has some really good ideas on it. This week there is a autistic boy on it with a younger brother and I'm hoping it might have some good ideas. With Steven most games/toys are played with in a totally different way that they are meant to be used, and so Steven will often want to line things up or play his rules and then you have Liam who wants to play with cars and crash them not just line them up and then you have two boys angry at each other cause they both have different ideas about hoe to play with things. The family in the house this week seem to have the same problem so hopefully there will be some good ideas today. More often than not i will say to Liam just let Steven do it the way he wants, but that's hardly fair on Liam is it?

Anyway off to do some more scrapbooking, hope everyone has the lovely warm sunny weather like we have here today.

Whoo hoot Wednesday

haven't done this for awhile so here is my list for this week
*The start of term 4.....YAY.

*Steven being extra happy this afternoon after school. he cam racing up to me with a certificate for taking part in the Dog "Do's" and "Don'ts" programme. Last year he didn't go anywhere near the dogs having a huge fear of them(or any animal that moves for that matter, he can get just as upset by a fly in his room as he can a dog...I believe its because he has no control over then and doesn't know what they are going to do next as with any living animal and he hates to not know whats going to happen next) anyway he was so happy and read out what was written on the certificate and showed mew the little booklet they good about the do's and don'ts of dogs...Well Done Steven.

*I have been getting back into scrapbooking and enjoying it again.

*Gotta be happy with this lovely weather we have been having and being able to put washing on the line instead of the airing rack.

*Steven might not be need to see his speech language therapist much longer, she sees him at school and I'm told is quite impressed with how well he is doing.

*Walking to school to save on the gas, and I have been enjoying the walks, this morning the kids pretty much ran to school, I don't know where they get all of their energy from.

*Sorting out Liam and his swimming problems at school. School start swimming this term and Liam is very stressed about it and has huge fear about getting in the pool. So have arrange for me to be there and get in the pool with him but if he not keen to get it then that is fine and I have been told they wont push him to get in, but he is still to get changed into his togs with the rest of the class which I'm happy for him to do so that when he is ready to get in he will be all set. Also will get a school pool key over the Xmas holidays and go up there everyday or second day and get him into the pool a bit.

Your got mail.....

....for this week Liam has been out to the letterbox every morning to check what mail we had. So off he would go with the little bathroom stool and then he would coming running back in and tell me how much mail there is, and i would ask him where it was and he say oh its in the letter box should i bring it in,LOL...umm yes please Liam. So off he would go running out to get the mail. This morning i followed him out and got these photos...so watch this space for a layout to happen.

Even with a stool he needs to be on tip-toes,LOL so cute

Walking down the drive with the mail

Then he asked if i could take a photo of him holding the mail

So i took up Megs challenge and have made a couple of cards and will be posting those out to a few people tomorrow and I have really enjoyed making card.

Celebrity Challenge

Since there were a few photos for this I thought I would make it into a slide show. So this is for the celebrity challenge over at The Sketch Book, and the challenge was to make a simple mini album...so you know that mini album of Liam's sleeping photos, well I thought here is my motivation for me to get that done.

And here is a piece of Liam's art work that he did a few weeks ago at school recycling rubbish, we have for the last term been saving rubbish form chip bags and twist bars etc... for school and the whole class made a picture each, very stunning considering its made form rubbish


Okay I cant seem to get the slide show up not sure why its not working will have another look tonight and see if i can get it up

Bits and pieces

I didn't realise just how many clear stamps I had. So now to find room somewhere to put them, but they look great and I'm sure now that they are all sorted and where I can see them I will use them alot more.

With the photos of Liam sleeping on the floor I decided to go through the other photos I have of liam and found this one of him when he moved from a cot to a bed, and for the first week he went to sleep on the floor in his room or hallway and this one which I thought is so cute of him asleep on the sofa that was next to his bed.

And this one that I love also of him and his giraffe. He use to bum shuffle around the house carrying him with him where ever he went and then when he started walking he would drag giraffe behind him but the tail.

I'm so Proud of you

Todays creation is a layout of Liam when he got up infront of the school and did his poem. The circle is a CD that has got a video clip of him both at home and at school doing his poem, the I covered it with some paper and added my journalling onto that. I dont know if you can tell from the photo but he was so nervous but did really well. He was upset that he didnt get a placing but I told him that in my eyes he came first. And for Liam this was such a big thing for him to do, 6months ago he would never have got up there infront of everyone and Im so proud of him for doing that and giving it ago.