Three Ring Circus

Ivy and Noah were born on the 30th of November 2005. (Two hours shy of the 1st of December).

Our caesarean was originally booked for the 23rd of December and their estimated date of delivery was the 12th of February.

They were born at 30 weeks gestation.

On this day the Feast of Saint Andrew is celebrated. Interestingly the first day of advent.

Our good doctor’s name was Andrew. (Coincidence, fate oR just plain creepy, you decide).

When I was pregnant with the first set of twins, it was after a struggle with three years of infertility.

When I was pregnant with the second set of twins, it was after the loss of our son. The struggle of grief and guilt.

When I was pregnant with my first set of twins, I didn’t have a day of morning sickness.

When I was pregnant with my second set, I was sick every day until they were born. Morning, noon and night.

When I was pregnant with set number one I took everything, after the first twelve weeks, for granted.

With the second set, every day was a gift.

Pregnancy with Imogen and Madeline was innocent and new -  that first flutter, kick, roll. The smells, cravings and body changes.

Pregnancy with Ivy and Noah was scary. I did not take the time to enjoy and appreciate all those blessings.

When I was pregnant with my first set of twins, I was young and niave.

With the second set, I felt old and jaded. 

When I was pregnant with Imogen and Madeline, I didn’t know the sex of my babies until they were born. The ultrasound was a fairly new diagnostic tool.

When I was pregnant with Ivy and Noah, I not only knew that I was carrying a boy and a girl, I had 3D ultrasonic photos of their…um…private parts.

The first twins’ ultrasound, David almost fell off his chair and remained silent and pale for hours.

The second twins’ ultrasound was…almost identical (with the exception that David did not enquire if the second embryo floating on the screen was a fault in the machine).

With the first set of twins, I was ‘over it’ by the time I was 28 weeks.

With the second set, I was grateful to make it to 28 weeks.

But with both, as with all the others, above everything else, I was just happy to achieve pregnancy.

Now that I can’t have any more babies, I long for pregnancy even more.

This entry is part of the Crazy Hip Blog Mamas Collaboration.

Hi!

Come in, come in! Don’t be shy!

Grab a chair and a coffee, grab a biscuit or some chocolate if you like, go on, help yourself. There’s plenty to go around.

First time here? Yes, I know there are alot of them, aren’t there? Yes, it’s always busy, sometimes chaotic but each and every one of them is special, just as they are.

What’s that you ask? What are the best things about their ages?  Do I like one stage better than another?

Is there an age that isn’t a good age? All have their challenges, that’s true but every year a child is on the earth is a miracle in itself. There is good in turning another year older, for the child and for the parents.

Which age should I talk about? I could really go on forever but I know you’re only here for a little while.

The eleven year olds, who you can enjoy a  long conversation with? The kids who are changing before your very eyes from little ones into teenagers, reminding you how life is ever moving. Watching them grow is an amazing honour.

Perhaps I should talk about how nice it is to have nine year olds. A time when life is full of adventure and discovery and imagination. When friends are important but a snuggle in bed with Mum and Dad in the morning is still the most treasured thing. For everyone. When dolls are just as cool as an MP3 player. When toilet humour is the funniest thing you have ever heard. They really make me smile.

Or maybe I could tell you all the great things about having twins just shy of turning two. You’d like that? Okay.

I think though you should know a bit about their past, just so you know how far they’ve come.

They were born at thirty weeks. So, about ten weeks early. They were sick in the NICU for a while with breathing problems and your run of the mill premmie issues. We brought them home just before they were due.

For a long time they didn’t do much, so we had to take them to an early intervention centre to encourage them to roll and sit and stand. I think from about the time they were fifteen months, they just sort of took off.

So here they are. They turn two next month. They are smart and funny and cute. I love that they stumble in at dawn for a cuddle. That David and I are their whole world. It’s amazing how fluent their words have become, how in just two years, they have learnt to speak in sentences. The things they say make me laugh, in a way I haven’t in a while. When they say cute things, it kind of makes me tingly all over.

It’s a great age, don’t you think? When everything is wonderous and special. It makes you look at the world with a new perspective. They find joy in the smallest things. A bird in the tree, singing, a ladybug on a leaf. Paddling in water and turning it into mud and then stomping in it so hard it splashes up onto their face!

They really love life, enjoy it to the fullest. It’s so refreshing.

I love watching their personalities evolving.

I know the little man is social and easy going. He gets tired easily and loves his snuggles. He’s a routine junky and if it is different than the norm, he doesn’t cope well.He’s a bit of a charmer with the ladies, you know. He flashes those big dimples and you’re all his. You can’t help but love him.

I’ve figured out that the little girl is shy with new people. She needs time to work you out but once she has, she is loyal to the end. I know too that she is serious and a thinker but that she also has a cheeky side. She is spirited and hardly stops for anything, she moves all day, there are very few quiet moments for her, except when she is sick.

They both have a bit of mischief in them but then, I guess that is part of being two, don’t you think?

What else is good about this age?

They understand what you are talking about, can follow direction. That’s pretty cool…and it’s cute as well.

My two are really into books, well, the boy is and the girl likes to chew on them, so she’s interested  but in a different way! Oh, and they are starting to have favourite things like Dorothy the Dinosaur from The Wiggles. It’s so adorable, it makes my heart melt.

I am really enjoying this age.

Yes, they are my last babies, so you are probably right, I don’t want to forget a thing but; you know what? Watching them also reminds me of the others at that age. It makes me wonder about what their future is going to be like. Watching the twins at this stage reminds me of how much I love the others too, how much I have enjoyed their journey as well.

How old did you say your little person is? I’d love to hear all about your favourite things about their age. Have you got time for another cuppa?

This post was written as part of  Mamablogga’s Group Writing Project for October. Why don’t you give it a try?

Courtesy of Ivy, consumer of all (supposedly) inedible products.

*Disclaimer: I have older kids who have repeatedly been told to put their small things away. These have been confiscated, thrown away and/or donated to goodwill shops. I am as vigilant as a mother can be but the girl still manages to swallow things.

* Tinselpoo (festive Christmas edition 2006, self explanatory).

* Easter egg tinfoil poo (I can only assume that there was a secret stash of chocolate eggs involved)

* Scrapbooking metal letter "F" poo (don’t ask. I don’t know how it got in her mouth or how she managed to swallow it without injury or how it worked its way through her system).

* Tamagotchi battery poo (see above disclaimer).

* 1 Barbie handbag and 1 Barbie shoe poo (colour co - ordinated, at least…pink and brown go well together, don’t they?).

* Azure blue wishing stone x 1 poo… followed by…

* Azure blue wishing stones x 5 (!!!!!!) poo (David almost passed out when he saw that one).

I had no idea where the stones were coming from until I followed her into her sister’s room one day to find a small vase full of them. She was getting up onto a toybox and helping herself to what, I can only imagine, she thought were lollies, from the tall boy! (Quickly taken away and thrown out).

* Littlest Pet Shop bottle (please refer to disclaimer again).

* Moth poo (after a day in the backyard. This surprise also included a couple of other insects which were not identifiable due to their chewed up nature. Yuck).

* Birthday candle poo (following my birthday, stolen from the dish drying rack. One blue and one red).

There have been others but those are the most memorable. I have never had a child who ate so many weird things before. I thought she was slowing down/growing up/losing interest after the moth incident. We went a few weeks where there was nothing but…well…poo in her nappies, however, after the birthday candle poo I am thinking she was just giving her tummy time to settle after eating bugs. *SIGH*

A friend phoned me last night. She asked me if I imagined my life would be like this, when I met David, when I was 17. She asked me if I ever imagined I would have so many children. The simple answer to that is; no.

I knew that I wanted kids from a young age. When we talked about children, David wanted two and I wanted four. The only thing we could agree on was that we wanted an even number of children so nobody was left out. I certainly didn’t think about the logistics of being a mum.

So what is Motherhood to me?

It’s all those things that everyone said it would be, it’s sacrifice, it’s full on, it’s the hardest job I have ever done. It’s wonderous and amazing and brings me so much happiness. It’s love and contentment and brings a fullness to each and every day in mind, body and soul. 

Mostly though motherhood is about learning.

As a mum, you are always teaching life skills but as a mum, I am also the perpetual student. I learn new things every day. About myself, about my children and I am still learning life skills!

When I first became a mum to twins, Imogen and Madeline, they taught me about selflessness, about the big picture. They taught me about patience (It took three years to conceive them) and understanding. I think they also taught me about time management and the importance of boundaries. On a funny note, they also taught me never to carry two babies upstairs, naked, when they have gastro…very messy!

Lily came into my life (about 9 months after the above bout of gastro). Lily taught me to really enjoy motherhood. She taught me to appreciate all the little things. When Lily came into my life, my father told me I was stupid for having more children, that I should be concentrating on a career, a house and having all the finer things in life. It was Lily’s birth that gave me the strength to stand up to him, tell him that family was more important to me than anything else. Although she was a surprise, she was a Godsend.

AJ and Malachy came into our home when they were four and three. I am not their biological mother but they are still my children. Through the boys I know about compromise. I know about overcoming terrible situations, adaptation, about hanging in there when you want to give up. I know about a longing to protect and a different kind of love, one that I have sometimes had to work at but one that is very much alive.

Four years after Lily, our first son, William, was born and died five days later. From Will I learnt about absolute devastation, a love that is so strong that I can still feel its presence every day. I learnt the beauty of letting go, I learnt to find and rely on my mother strength and I learnt that I could keep going, fuelled by the love of my children.

My last set of twins, Ivy and Noah, were born at 30 weeks in 2005 about a year and a half after William’s death and after a very scary pregnancy but it is with these children, my last, that I have learnt some of the most valuable lessons. As a mother to these precious miracles I have learnt to hope. Over the last twenty one months, they have taught me to feel joyous about motherhood again, at times when I felt there was no joy left in me. I have realised that I am a mother first and foremost and that, even though it can be a difficult, exhausting, sometimes thankless job, motherhood means everything to me.

It’s my life.

Oh, and I also learnt to appreciate my own mother much more than I ever did as a child.

This topic was published as part of MamaBlogga’s Group Writing Project. The theme is motherhood. It’s my first attempt.

Why don’t you give it a go?

There is horses flu everywhere in NSW. It started up here in the boonies, apparently. Horses all over Australia are being quarantined so as not to infect the rest of the equine community. It leads me to wonder what it would be like if you were standing next to a horse, with the flu, when he sneezed… gooey springs to mind, wet, ummmm… green?

Here is a joke as told by a 3rd grader (column 8, Sydney Morning Herald) ; Q:Where do the horses go when they have the flu? A: They go to the horse - pital!!!

It seems there is alot of that going around, the flu I mean and sneezing. When you are the mother of atopically challenged children, you don’t hate Spring but you don’t love it either. The weather here has been the typical asthma inducing type, gloriously and unseasonably warm in the day, with hot gusts of wind and freezing at night. Out of the seven children, four are currently dealing with their asthma. For the older girls, it’s more a case of compliance to their medication and upping the dose accordingly but for Ivy and Noah it is a series of nebulisers, preventers and then prednisone when things get bad…and nebbing two cranky toddlers every three hours is about as bad as it can be (for me) before we seek hospital admission.

Although, I am slowly (so slowly) coming to the realisation that gaining admission to hospital in the boonies is harder than it is in the big smoke.  Personally, I think it has more to do with paeds than with anything else. When Imogen and Madeline were little and I was inexperienced in asthma induced problems, I would ring their paed (a wonderful female doctor) and she would see me. In later years, we had a standing letter for the hospital and if I phoned the doctor she would more often than not meet us in the children’s ward. She was, in my opinion, a true paediatrician. Not only did she look after the girls’ well being but when their parents were getting a touch of the crazies, she could see it and would use her ‘assertive practitioner skills’ to guide us into hospital, so that we could have support too. She was a Godsend. Fast forward eleven years and my how things have changed!

Now, you can’t even get in to see your paed. You have to beg the receptionist for five minutes of his time. When you make a mercy call in the morning, if you are lucky, he will call you back at dinnertime…when the babies have really lost the plot, are crying at the top of their lungs, other children are scattered throughout the house in varying stages of undress, showering or getting redressed, because, on top of everything else, you have agreed to let the school aged children go to the fundraising disco, which has been scheduled for, you guessed it, dinnertime.

If you say you are not coping and that your week is like a living hell, the new age paed will be encouraging of your feelings of self doubt by belittling them and cussing about how horrible his week has been. (Of course it is impossible for a lowly SAHM/midwife to have a worse week than a doctor). If you then concede to being able to cope at home for a few more days on the understanding that you will be able to see him first thing Monday morning, you can then expect to be told that his schedule for that day is ‘disasterous’ and he can only squeeze you in at 8am (breakfast time and leaving for the bus time).

Unless you throw a mother (pardon the pun) of a tanty and tell the doctor that you are not going to make one more decision regarding the health of your babies because HE is the doctor and should be ‘guiding’ we parentals (medical training or no), do not expect the millenium paed to aquire ‘assertive practitioner skills’ anytime in the forseeable future. You see, he does not want to make the wrong choice at the risk of being sued. AAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!

While I very much like our paed, I find him very frustrating…hang on, there is a common thread here. I find all doctors frustrating! Well, what do you know? Is that what they call an epiphany?

1. Do not feed your babies pumpkin, sweet potato and carrot mix for dinner and then take them out Father’s Day shopping the next day. That is a very bad move. Post - pumpkin - poo is bright orange and runny and will squelch out of nappies and onto the stroller. Pumpkin poo is also very smelly and will not please the nostrils of the shoppers and staff in Big W. You will need to make a hasty exit if one (or in this case both) of the babies decide to do their duds whilst in the shopping centre. Also, Huggies wipes are severely inadequate to mop up said poo.

2. Five point harnesses are useless and are not a safety feature on your stroller or your highchair when you have almost two year olds. They are pointless (and hard to clean post pumpkin poo blow outs). It doesn’t matter how you attach the shoulder straps, ’norties’ babies are alot smarter than ‘nineties’ babies and they will wriggle out of them. ( An anonymous contributor suggested that the shoulder straps should go once around the neck before joining to the belt. I’m a little skeptical about this proposal but I have to say, as time passes, it is becoming a seemingly plausable idea. The same contributor just asked if I could swipe restraints from the hospital and use them… for him, me or them?).

3. It doesn’t matter how many times you ask a baby to get down from the top of the outdoor table, remove him, beg him, he will not learn that what he is doing is dangerous until he falls off and bangs his chin and draws blood.

4. There is no point in making a chicken and cheese sandwich for almost two year olds. By the time they are finished disassembling them and eating the parts that they want and throwing the other parts to the dogs, you come to the realisation that you may as well have just given them bread and butter.

5. When you have toddlers in the house, it is wise to invest in at least one dog otherwise you will spend all of nap time cleaning up after meals.

At least, that is what he looked like at 4am this morning when he was in my bed trying to evict my eyeballs from their sockets. Blonde hair, blue eyes, a blue and white striped Bonds suit and the most devilish of grins, dimples included.

Why, oh why won’t my babies sleep through the night? When I took them home from the NICU the nurses commented on how lucky we were to have NICU trained babies. ‘They’re in a good routine’, they said, ‘they’ll just wake and feed, wake and feed’, another commented.

Look, don’t get me wrong, that is great when you bring them home, newborn from the hospital.When you are happy to baby gaze and you want to feed them every three hours, when you are floating on the pink fluffy clouds of euphoria. The trouble is, they can’t seem to break that routine and they are ALMOST two!!!! Two! Those pink, fluffy clouds are looking awfully grey and stormy, right about now.

For goodness sake, I am so sleep deprived! I can’t think straight anymore. Give me a break!(Please)

Here are some hints for Ivy and Noah (and any other babies out there who refuse to sleep through the night);

Do NOT come into my bed unless you want to snuggle down and sleep. If you want to seek and destroy, then do it in your own room. Mummies and Daddies need to sleep, otherwise they get cranky in the day. You, know, that time when you want them at their best, so they can dote upon you?

If you wake up very early in the morning, it will not put you in good stead to demand a ‘bockle’ (bottle) and then hit me in the face when it is not forth coming. No amount of hitting will get me or your father up in the freezing cold to get you a drink.

If you wake up in the middle of the night, do not get out of bed and wake up your brother or sister as well. We will be alot friendlier if there is only one baby to put back to sleep. Two wailing babies is just asking for trouble.

If you have to wake up can you please do it half an hour BEFORE we go to bed, not half an hour AFTER? If you haven’t guessed by now, when parents go to bed, they are exhausted and are asleep as soon as their heads hit the pillow. Half an hour in is serious REM time and you are interrupting the most restful part of the night.

Finally, if you do happen to wake several times during the night (and expect us to get out of bed to resettle you), when Mummy says it’s time for a day sleep, know that she means it. Know that you running around in overtired hyperactivity mode makes Mummy more tired. Mummy saying time for sleep is not an invitation for you to start up a conversation of babble with your sibling. It is not the time to do a poo in your clean nappy and it is not the time to chant some baby mantra at the top of your lungs. Sleep means sleep (and time out for your worn out caregiver…often a first opportunity to shower and have some nutrition for the day so that she has the energy to bend to your every whim).

P.S. Another little hint; even just one night of full sleep will do wonders for the Mummy and the Daddy. Take that into consideration when you go to bed tonight.

What is the Noah - ism for glasses? :Eye - ses, of course!

He is becoming so aware of his surroundings now, noticing things and naming them. It is really interesting to watch. Maybe it’s because I am older and have a better understanding of the different developmental milestones or maybe it’s just because Ivy and Noah are my last babies and I don’t want to miss a single thing, who knows but every new day is an adventure, a new discovery.

Noah was sitting in front of his bedroom window this morning, just watching the world go by, silent and still. Very unlike Noah. When he heard me come into the room he turned to me and pointed outside… ‘rainging’ he said. Just like that. It was raining too, pouring infact, so much so that the scene outside was quite blurred through the rain on the window. Our backyard is starting to resemble a swimming pool again. I hope it stops soon. Imogen and Madeline are in a school production, held every year up here in the Hunter region, called Starstruck. It was supposed to be on in June but was postponed because of the flooding. The performances are all set to start again this week. On Thursday. It would be a shame if it had to be cancelled because of more poor weather. Praying for sunny days here.

AJ’s soccer team made it to the semi finals this weekend. Unfortunately the team lost this round and so his next game is in Singleton. I really hope they win this match. They have played extremely well all season. We need good weather for this too.

For those lovely friends who have been worried about the babies with their gastro, thank you. It means alot to know that you all care. Noah turned the corner on Friday and Ivy, although still not 100% is alot better and they are both eating and drinking now. Maddy and Mal seem to be the only ones who avoided the bug this time around. Fingers crossed that is the last we see of it for 2007.

When gastro has seeped into the very pores of the house and you fear that there is no light at the end of that proverbial tunnel, who do you call for help? You call the two grandmas, of course.

On Thursday, when I was fearful for my son’s life, my mum, "Gran" (or Gan, if you are Noah) came for a ‘visit’. She sat with me and listened while I blubbered about how worried I was. She rocked the little girl, who was also very sick, in the rocking chair, made cups of tea and was generally a shoulder to cry on. She looked after me, mothered the mother. When, in the early afternoon hours, I decided enough was enough and took Noah up to the local hospital (I know, I said I wouldn’t but some fools never learn) she stayed at home and waited for the big kids to get back from school and calmed them. After almost a week coping on my own, she was some welcomed adult companionship. There was no hesitation about coming out to help, even though we had poo and spew from one end of the house to the other.

The next day, having picked up the scent of a family member in need, "Grandma" (Mamar) David’s mum came to my aid. Even though Noah was feeling slightly better and ventured off my lap to move over to hers, my arms were now full with the very sick little girl. More sitting and rocking, more cuddling of babies, more cups of tea, food, washing on and off the line, conversation and reassurance. Even after sage warnings that the gastro bug was a nasty one and she would catch it, she still made her way up to the boonies.

Quietly and efficiently these women work their magic. They are just there when you need them the most. We are very lucky to have them in our lives.

When I took Noah up to the local hospital the doctor came in and looked him over and declared him ‘not sick enough for hospital’. I was upset, to say the least that we were being turned away. Noah, who was a semi comatose ball of lethargy on my lap did not have a heart rate high enough (it was only 149 bpm) his tongue and mouth weren’t that dry, his eyes weren’t sunken enough and vomiting three to four times a day for four days was just not enough. I felt that we had hung in there long enough and the fact that Noah hadn’t moved from my lap in over twelve hours was a bad sign, that and the fact that his temperature was high and his hands and feet were deathly cold (a sign that the body is peripherally shutting down, keeping circulation close to the major organs) but not bad at all, according to the doctor. So, with a bottle of hydrolyte I left the hospital, feeling for all the world like a paranoid mother. When I arrived home the paed called and we discussed things. His cries of ‘for the love of God, don’t bother with the local hospital anymore.’ did not fall on deaf ears this time. Never the less, we pushed through the night with sips of water, terrible stomach cramps and tired, fragile babies and parents… and we made it - just.

Ivy was not in good form today but again, we will push through the night and hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.

*** WARNING, DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE SICK OF HEARING ABOUT THE SICK*** (hey, I just realised I can use colour on this blog!)

It’s very early on Monday morning and I know now that Lily’s vomiting was not just a random act of kindness, in wanting to paint my bathroom. In hindsight, it was foolish of me to relax after a respiratory illness as bad as the flu that has just swept through our house. It was foolish and complacent (there is that word again) of me. Did you know that some viruses can cause respiratory infection AND tummy upsets? Adenovirus springs to mind and, obviously, in this house, influenza too. I have had personal experience with my friend adenovirus. Imogen aquired it some years ago and after a particularly nasty ‘cold’ with asthma involved, it travelled through her system, into her gut and…well, you can imagine the rest. So, now gastro has come to reside in this house. As far as I can tell, it comes in varying forms of disgusting. From the throw everything up and feel better in 24 hours to the nauseated feeling of something isn’t quite right that lasts for days and everything in between. Yuck. If there is one thing I hate more than snot, it’s vomit and if there is one thing I hate more than vomit, it’s diarrhoea. Somebody get me a bucket…

When David discovered Ivy had…soiled her bed in the wee hours of the morning he rapidly made his way to go to work. He washed and dressed (while I cleaned Ivy up - he did strip the sheets for me) and while I was dirty (pardon the pun) that he was about to make a clean (oh I crack myself up) getaway, I also had to laugh because his running commentry really lightened the mood.

Ivy and Noah were sitting on the bed, carrying on with their regular banter of babble, squeals and screeches, when Ivy made a rather loud rasberry "thbrrrrrrrr!" sound. David pipes up …’it was like this’ he explained in a high pitched imitation of Ivy’s voice. Then Noah let out an almighty blurt "Thbbbbrrrrttttt"…"more like that, actually," said David, "I’ll tell you how it really happened". Narrating on his son’s behalf. I fell about the bed laughing, the babies staring at me as if I had forgotten to take my crazy pills this morning. Seeing my mirth, he made to leave and I grabbed him and said, "You think you’re going to work and leaving me with the gastro kids, think again Buster!"

His reply to that? "Buster thanked the mice for the wonderful party… and then he ate them" (apparently an old family saying) and with that vacated the quarantined house. I live in a crazy world people, how is one supposed to stay sane?

…until our holiday but who’s counting and wasn’t the weather beautiful today?

Today I was supposed to move all my scrapbooking stuff into Ivy’s old room, wash mountains of sheets, make some lycra boots, clean up my room and rearrange the loungeroom. I was supposed to go food shopping, weed the garden and wash down the stroller. Supposed to.

What I actually did was two loads of sheet washing (which the lovely Maddy hung out for me), a load of school uniforms, I scrubbed down the stroller and while I waited for that to dry, I got in the car with the family and went food shopping…for picnic yummanas. Then we went out to Hunter Valley Gardens for a picnic and basked in the late Winter sun, ate antipasto on paper plates, munched on TOOBS, watched Ivy try to play football and Noah being pulled around in his blue carcar. After we had had our fill of all things delicious we went for a walk and found ourselves in front of the Ice Cream Parlor at Oscars.

For those of you who don’t know, I am an ice cream addict (self confessed). I have lovingly passed this trait onto all of my children (even the non biological kids). The (almost) hardest part of the day was choosing the flavour…the hardest part, really, was having to share with Ivy the ice cream hog!

Did I tell you all that we put Ivy in the big bed? Yep. And, did I tell you that she slept through the night for five nights in a row? No? I didn’t tell you? That’s probably because I was sleeping or catching up on sleep or dozing, dreaming, napping, snoozing, catching some zees, anything you can imagine (don’t get too carried away, people, remember we are parents of seven children and we really are tired) without a baby in the bed. Did I also mention that five nights is just enough time to become complacent and expect that she will continue to do so? Wrong! So wrong. You should NEVER become complacent! Because just when you are least expecting it, she will throw you an all nighter, just to put you back in your place. If you do relax then you can also expect that her brother will wake up too and together they will make your night almost too much to bare, add to that an early morning (4:30am) vomit (picture the toilet literally painted in spew, walls, door, floor, sink…anywhere else BUT the toilet) from Lily and your night is set! Oh and don’t forget to have one of Lily’s best friends sleeping over for the night. PERFECT! That’ll teach yer, yer pesky parents!

Seriously folks, five nights is a cause for celebration in this house!

In other baby news, did you know that it takes Noah roughly 10 seconds to steal the "helpme" (torch) from his sister, even though she is waving it from side to side and screeching at the top of her lungs, and when you need two hands to push - pull the tape measure in and out of its casing, your mouth is a handy place to hold your father’s mobile phone, so that your brother won’t take that too?

Hmmm, that’s about it for this week. Let’s see what mid August has to offer!

"Hartee" means hot tea. How cute! My little man is growing up!

Ivy’s love of shoes continues. With age has come the ability to apply one’s own shoes…or in Ivy’s case, one of hers and one of Noah’s!!!

Why oh why are my baby making/carrying/birthing days over? I SO want another baby. I know, I hear you all gasping at the prospect. Don’t worry, I’m neutered.

Kelly came around today after we had gone walking, with the beautiful Lexie. Gorgeous little pudding pie!

Thought you might all like to see a photo of her. She is almost three months old now. Born by caesarean. Kelly went through so much to have this little cherub! Gorgeous, don’t you think?

I tried not to hold her…I did! I knew as soon as I touched that soft baby skin that my heart would skip a beat. Let’s face it, I am just one big mother hen, cluck cluck clucking my way through this life!

Ok, holiday update; As of today we are NOT going to Fiji. *SIGH* After some consideration we have decided that we will go to Queensland in the third week of September. While I am very disappointed in this I will make the most of it. Hope it’s warm up there because it’s bloody freezing here. We could all use some sun, fun and laughter right about now.

Happy Birthday to my dear friend Carolyn!!! Hope you had a wonderful day! The world is a better place with you in it.

you walk into the loungeroom from a toilet break to find ALL of the videos, scrapbooking magazines, books and DVDs pulled out and strewn around the floor and feel happy because it’s good to see the perpetrators laughing.

someone accidently leaves the toilet door open and you find your son in there amongst reems and reems of toilet paper that he has just spun off the roll AND he is tearing open another one while you run to get your camera, laughing all the while.

twin babies have a sword fight with the whisks from the second drawer down…how they broke through the baby lock is beyond me.

I love it when they smile!

The good news?

Ivy is getting better!!!

Yes, she is on the road to recovery. Finally.

It’s all because of my new love…Erythromycin. How can one little antibiotic be SO different from another?

Here are the good bits;

Normal temperature for 24 hours.

Nose is running clear!

Left ear is clearing up (with the help of hydrogen Peroxide and Ciproxin drops).

Cough is not so wet.

No vomiting antibiotic for over 24 hours.

The bad bits;

Upset tummy, bad diahrroea, still clingy and whingy when awake, still needing Panadol/Neurofen for pain almost 2nd hourly.

For the first time in over a week I am feeling more relaxed and happy. Even though Ivy was up for a large part of the night with tummy cramps, she is up and walking around this morning, playing and rummaging through things! YAY! I never thought I would celebrate the demolishing of my kitchen but here I am!

While Ivy has been  feverish, she has been obsessed with her shoes. She would wake with a high temp and cry ’shoeshoeshoesssss!’ Even when she was so ill she couldn’t stand upright, she would be snuggled into my lap, on the rocking chair, grizzling about her need for shoes.

Here is a photo I took of Ivy last Sunday, in the car, with a high temp, loving her shoes. Ivy has several pairs of shoes and each and every one of them has helped her through this last week gone. I hear the cry for her shoes in my sleep now.

Yesterday, Trish and her boys made the long trek up to see me. She braved the flu for me. She knew I was struggling and came to give me some company. I had a really nice day, what more could you want? Adult company, chocolate and hot tea. Ivy had woken in a good mood and was pottering around for the first half of the day. Even when she lost the plot and cried and grizzled for the whole afternoon, Trish still stood firm. She didn’t beg off, she didn’t cuss or roll her eyes because Ivy was sick, sad and demanding. She was there. Thank you Trish. You are a really special person!

On a final note this morning, I took this photo of My Noahry Boy, trying his hardest to be like Mum.

Here he is, on the kids computer happily typing away.

I wonder if he thinks he is blogging?

David’s flu has been passed on to Ivy and Noah and Imogen.

Yesterday Ivy had a very scary febrile convulsion and my acopia reared it’s ugly head. The paed (with his great plan) went home and was ‘uncontactable’ (is that a word?) according to his receptionist.

So we went to the local hospital. I only have two words to explain the experience…NEVER AGAIN.

When Ivy decided it was a good time to fit, it was about 3:10pm. The kids were on their way home, via bus and Mal was coming home via his bus and was not due until 4:30pm.

It’s amazing when something freaky happens how nurses just go into nurse mode. I stayed calm (I surprised myself), waited it out, stripped her down, wiped her down with a warm washer and when I got her temp from 40.2 to 39.5 I phoned David…and lost the plot entirely. Noah was an absolute angel while all of this was going on (bless his cotton socks). David called the paed’s rooms (the second for the day) then the hospital and I called Mum, who made the hours drive out to our house and arrived just as Mal came home. By that time, Ivy’s temp was 38.4 and she was alert again. I grappled with a trip up to the hospital but in the end (after David phoned them and asked the triage nurse if it were necessary) decided I had better get it checked out, so almost two hours after the event I found myself in A&E.

Of course there was nothing they could do (aside from give us another course of antibiotics - her ears and tonsils were infected) and the nurses were very kind but they treated me like some kind of white trash idiot, who knew nothing. (Maybe they know something I don’t…hmmm).

This morning both Ivy and Noah are alot better (although still not up to their usual standards of mischief). Immy is still in bed nursing a sore head and asthma.

Here is a favourite saying of my Mum’s,

Yesterday is gone…forget it!

Tomorrow never comes…don’t worry about it!

Today is here…Live it!

Oh, i’ll be living it alright. I’ll be living it in the laundry catching up on a day’s worth of lost washing time!!!

Electrophobia: The fear of electricity or in Noah’s case, the fear of electrical appliances.

To date, Noah is afraid of;

The vacuum cleaner,

The mix master,

The blow heater,

The hair dryer,

The blower vac and

The lawn mower.

When any of these machines whir into action, Noah cries and runs to me. He clings to me tightly and shakes. His heart palpates way above his normal rate and his eyes dart around the room, looking for the dangerous noise maker.

I’m not kidding. He is petrified.

We have tried all manner of things to settle his fears but so far none have worked. I’m hoping that he will grow out of it. No good woman will want to know him if his phobias take him into adulthood!

If Noah doesn’t grow out of his electrophobia he won’t be able to;

clean the house,

puree up the baby food

or do any of the lawn duties…

I know HE may think that is heaven on a stick but his wife won’t! Trust me on that one!

Scattered around this entry are the photos that I put forward for the Jeans for Genes competition, run by Huggies. Do you like them? The gorgeous jumpers that they are wearing are made by an Australian designer Oobi. I found them at a gorgeous internet boutique minifashionista 

David is still sick with the flu. His lowest temperature today was 37.7 degrees. He was going to go to work but I reasoned with his sense of responsibility. I asked him to consider all the men with newborn babies and the men with children whose health was already compromised. He agreed. As it is, someone from his work infected him and inturn he has infected Ivy and Noah (going downhill rapidly this evening) and Immy and Maddy are feeling unwell tonight too. He called into the office to say he wasn’t going to be in, only to be answered by a stuffed up, gooey, male voice, who professed to also have the flu!

Boys, what are you doing? If you are sick, stay at home! Stop the cycle! Forget about your male work ethic for just a minute and consider the children (and the mother’s who have to look after them) when you cough all over a man who is also a father!!! ARRRRRGH!

David says he is going in tomorrow, no matter how lousy he feels. *SIGH* Have I not taught that man anything?

Oh, just to have one night without a baby in my bed! It would probably feel weird, actually. Last night was the first night that Noah slept through, since his last bout of illness. In absolute contrast to him was his sister and my resident teddy bear, Ivy Hazel. Last night, I went to bed at 11pm after thinking that I had settled Ivy post 4 hour sleep cycle tanty. Ha ha, what on earth was I thinking? Half an hour later I found that child back in my bed. She proceeded to knock around the bed in its entirety. David, who has come down with a severe flu, was shivering with rigor next to me, in a male, comatose, kind of way (only women will know what I am talking about, males who read this will deny that they can sleep this way at all). So he was unaware of the tumbleweed daughter between us. At 3am, I had had enough so I put her in her cot and shut the door. For the next half hour she stood wailing ‘doordoordoor’ I tried all the tricks but nothing was dampening the door baby down. In the end I took her back to bed, where she slept for an hour before waking up for the day. It’s been a while since that girl has done an all nighter and boy, did I feel it this morning! (Notice the VERY dark circles under Ivy’s and my eyes in photos provided as evidence).

I guess we have always had babies in the bed, except for a brief interlude, Immy and Maddy, although excellent night sleepers, would come in at around 5am until they were about six or seven for a cuddle and Lily was an early morning ‘ I’ve had a bad dream, can I snuggle with you.’ kinda girl. You’d think that having Ivy (and occasionally Noah) in the bed would be no big deal and it isn’t -  if we can both (all) sleep. It’s just that Ivy DOESN’T. She thinks my bed is a party and she’s the only one invited! For those of you concerned about David’s sleep, don’t be. He sleeps well, thank you very much. The only time his sleep is disturbed is if I kick him hard enough! (Joking people, he is a good man).

Yesterday I had my first ‘time out’ in ages. Mum and I went to the grand opening of my fave internet scrapbooking store Shop & Crop, going real life!  Yep, a real shop! Although it was busy and crowded, I had a great time. I bought some goodies, ate some food, talked to people, bought more goodies and generally felt inspired to scrap - just what the doctor ordered. It was good because I came home to a very sick husband and you definately need happy things to draw on when you have one of those. (Thanks, Davey for letting me out for the afternoon AND for looking after the kids AND for putting dinner in the oven). While we were there we booked in for a class with Jennifer Hall ( a scrapbooking celebrity) in a couple of weeks time. So exciting!

While I have acknowledged that Noah’s play is very boy oriented, as in cars, cars and more cars I don’t know that I have waffled on much at all about Ivy’s play.  I have to mention though her play with a dolly yesterday. Firstly, she cuddled and rocked the baby, then she stripped the baby off to change the nappy. When Maddy gave her a wipe, she knew  EXACTLY what to do with it. She cleaned up baby’s bum, of course! Who says gender specific play is a learned thing? I think Ivy just naturally knew what to do with the doll. A very distinctive female instinct of nurturing. It is amazing to watch, especially having a boy/girl twin combination. Noah also cuddles the doll when it is given to him but soon loses interest and nappy changing and wiping bottoms - forget it!!!!!

Today I received some more fluffy mail from Jolmaz.

2 cute covers, some liners and 2 very cute doll nappies.

When David and I saw them we both came to the same conclusion at almost the same time. Those little nappies could have fit Ivy and Noah when they were born! The girls are totally in love with them. Thanks Maz!

Noah decides that he will say his first four word sentence.

Here it is… "I got the broom-broom". At the time he was holding up a toy car for my perusal. Oh the joys of having a boy.

Pegs are very versatile.

They can hang clothes up, they can keep things closed, they can be a form of security as in they can lock cage doors for birds who are doggedly pursued by small black fox terriers who see said bird as a light snack before dinner. Yes, pegs are many things.

In a toddler’s world, pegs are the best toys anyone can ever give you (or that you steal from your mother’s peg basket).

Ivy and Noah love pegs. There are a few rules to peg playing though and these must be adhered to, otherwise you are just not playing it in the right way and you will be punished.

The first rule is you must always play when Mum is busy trying to hang out clothes. You must (and this is a given otherwise you will encounter a swift clap over the head by the offended twin) tip the whole bucket up and onto the ground and then proceed to kick the pegs around in an outwards motion - to cover the most surface area.

The second rule is that you must then pretend that you want to help your mother pick up the scattered pegs, only to throw them further when the peg bucket is offered up to you. In this game, ‘ta’ doesn’t mean ‘thank you’, it actually means, ‘you’re joking, I wasn’t really going to give it to you!’

Rule three (and this would have to be one of my favourites) After your mother has picked up all the pegs, aquired the bucket and put it in what she believes to be a safe place, show her who is really the boss in this establishment and climb onto the table and start rule one again.

Rule four; take turns placing the bucket on each other’s heads and laugh enthusiastically at the results. This takes up a large portion of the game because toddlers always think they are the funniest things to walk the earth.

Rule five; when rule four gets old, shove every single peg through the umbrella hole onto the ground and laugh at this too.

When Mum gets cranky, repeat rule two (because that’s going to make it all better, isn’t it?) and when you get bored go and find something new to get into, preferably something that is going to rile Mum up more. 

Seriously, it is the most fun you can have when you are twenty months old!

School holidays are coming to an end. We have had some lovely days with friends.

Notably, Sharon, Kate, Courtney and Jessabell, who we met through Belly Belly but it turns out the older girls all go to dance together. We had a nice day playing outside.

Also Mary and her boys Eoghan and Luke and her gorgeous girl, Gemma. A great day was had by everyone. AJ relished in the male company and I loved talking to Mary - she is amazing, interesting and funny. I am very much enjoying the blossoming of our friendship. Mary’s visit came the day after the whole trauma of the cinema and really lifted my spirits.

We missed seeing Trish and the boys these holidays and that was definately felt by everyone.

We missed seeing Tracey and Mollie. I’m pretty sure this was the first break when we haven’t had their company and that was pretty weird not having our long term friends around.

While the big kids spent alot of time with Grandma and Pop and Gran, Ivy, Noah and I only saw Grandma the once and Gran a couple of times over the two weeks. I guess we have kept a pretty low profile but I did miss their company.

Other friends who came to play;

Emma for Maddy - Emma came on the fateful Harry Potter day.

Nicole for Immy - came to visit on the last day of the holidays.

Friends are wonderful - they lift you up make you feel as though you are special!

Just quietly, we are hoping to take the kids away on a real vacation early in September. Dave and I are gunning for Fiji. Whether we can pull it off is another thing. So far nothing has gone right. A few months ago (try five) we made the move to The Greater in the hope of partially funding our holiday. We were told, five weeks and everything would be finalised. Almost half a year later and things are still not finished. We went to sign the final papers over the weekend, only to be fobbed off for another week. Talk about false advertising.

We’re not silly. We know that with seven children we will have to put in a large sum of money to get us anywhere. The only place the Greater points will get nine people is a caravan in Jinglemoney (Yes it IS a real place people - look it up!). Still we can use all the help we can get. I’ll keep you updated but hopefully by next weekend we will be on our way to planning a great break!

Wow, I thought I didn’t have much to blog about today. I guess I surprised myself.

On a final note I just wanted to put in a link to this blog. Having two sets of twins is great, amazing and different but imagine having Quintuplets! She’s currently 31 weeks and hoping to get to 34! Oh honey, I’m wishing you every luck.

In Noah language Beyope means open. I know that because he has followed me around all day begging me to ‘beyope’ an impulse bottle, ‘beyope’ the lid off the biscuit tin and ‘beyope’ the slow cooker lid so he could partake of the pumpkin soup.

He wants me to ‘beyope’ the door now so he can go outside into the freezing cold to play on the equipment. Better go and do it or I just might ‘beyope’ myself to a toddler tanty!

PS, the mark down Noah’s face is a bruise that he aquired this morning after I opened the impulse bottle and he thought he would make a fast get away from his sister (owner of Impulse) only to turn around and run into the corner of the buffet and hutch! OUCH!

There are words that I am hearing over and over. Words that are made up by Ivy and Noah but that I can understand. I want to write them down so I don’t forget…

‘Gubem‘ - this generally means I’m hungry and can see you eating and I’ll have whatever you’re having…NOW! Sometimes used as a happy noise as well.

‘Noonga Noonga’ is a Noah only word. It is a word that means I am angry and I want you to go away.

‘Na - Na’ used to be a word for food but now it is just used for morning and night bottles or if they want milk in the middle of the day. Just because they demand it, doesn’t mean they get it though.

"Y-eye Y-eye" is their word for put me in the swing and push me.

‘Barp’ I want to have a bath.

‘carcar’ self explanitory.

‘hankooo‘ means thankyou in Ivy’s world.

‘gullygullygully‘ means I have done something naughty and I am not telling you what it is. (Noah)

‘uppyuppyuppy‘ Ivy’s word for I would like a horsey ride please. (Giddy - up)

‘hmmm - may’ means help me (Noah)

‘prittypritty’ means I am beautiful, look at me. (Ivy)

‘barfly’ butterfly. (Ivy)

"arrarrarrarr’ means there is a dog barking outside or I can see a dog.

‘weeooh weeooh’  I am  very tired but by making this sound I hope to keep myself awake. (Ivy - ism)

New words  and phrases that everyone can understand that are commonly used in this house now are …

‘get down’! I wonder why they know how to say that?

‘door, close it’. Usually used when they have gotten into a cupboard and they see me coming.

‘get out’ Used in context of wanting to get out of the bath or in telling the dogs to go outside.

‘gotta go’ Started off as a Noah-ism but now both use it. Self explanitory.

‘joosh’ juice.

‘no’ self explanitory and said by both ALOT.

‘nigh - night’  goodnight.

Of course there are all the standard words like Mum (mymum as Noah says) Dad, bubba (what they often call each other and what they call any baby they see in real life or in photos, Immy, Maddy (marmar), Lily (liddleliddle), AJ and Mal. Hello, bye, hot (often used when they know they are not supposed to touch something, as in ‘don’t touch the fire it’s hot!’). Up with arms raised, down with bodies twisted in a downward motion. Shoes is a common one too.

I’m sure there are more.

We still use lots of Immy and Maddy words in our day to day living…  ‘Squidge’ for vegemite, ‘mamitch’ for sandwich. Lily had some pearlers too…’snotrils’ for nostrils and ‘foot sleeves’ for pants. I want to remember all these little things. I need to hang onto them for when they are grown up.

We had a wonderful day on Sunday! We went to Samuel and Joel’s first birthday. It was lovely being around so many little ones. Sammy and Joel were all smiles all of the time. They took the people and presents in their stride. Gorgeous, happy little guys. I took my camera but I forgot the memory card so no photos for me just sweet memories. Ivy and Noah played on the outside equipment throughout the afternoon. Ivy didn’t stop for anything. David and I shovelled food into her mouth while she was climbing the slippery dip. Noah, bless his cotton socks, being male, could not master the playgym. He could climb up and get into the body of the colourful plastic but from there, he was stumped. Instead of trying to work it out, he head butted the sides and the front screeching ‘getttouuuuutttt!!!!!’ All the while Ivy was climbing the stairs, swinging from the bar, to the floor and through the exit over and over again, barely giving her brother a sideways glance.

We had to stop to give them both ventolin through the nebuliser a few hours in but otherwise we thought they did ok, asthmawise. After the croup went straight to  an exacerbation of their asthma and we had been struggling to control the rattle and hum of our wheezy babies.

On the way home Ivy and Noah started to cough and wheeze and wheeze and cough. By the time we hit Pennant Hills, they could barely catch their breath. We entertained the idea of driving straight to the hospital but somewhere between the Berowra exit and Gosford, they fell asleep, hands above their heads, necks extended, rapidly grasping at each breath. I just wanted to get them home. I thought that if I could get them there, I could medicate them and get through until morning. SO we pushed on. By the morning and having nebbed them 2nd hourly I was exhausted and so was David. Ivy and Noah were largely better, having made it through the night. A little shakey from all the ventolin but better.

I was disturbed though and not taking the series of the nights events well at all. In a paediatric world this is known as ‘parent acopia’ The parent’s inability to cope with the situation. Often hospital admissions of children are made because of this, according to some. It got me thinking, where do we go if we feel that we can’t cope? I haven’t been in that situation for such a long time. Do we go to the closest hospital? Do we go to the hospital that our paed is attached to? Do we go at all? Because, when you get to 2nd hourly nebs, there’s not alot more a hospital can do for you. It really would be because I couldn’t handle the babies being sick anymore. Of course, I wouldn’t be silly. If Ivy or Noah were in trouble I would take them but hospital is a last resort in this house.

Parent acopia was very real for me on Sunday night. When I asked the paed today we made a plan. He said my problem wasn’t that I didn’t cope. It was that I coped too well. Essentially, he made it ok for me not to cope. He let me know that most parents wouldn’t cope with 4th hourly nebs, let alone 2. He made my acopia acceptable… for me. So now, if I get to Sunday night’s stage of complete and utter breakdown, I can go to his hospital and we will take it from there.

We have a plan and I like plans!

On Monday I met some lovely nurses. We introduced ourselves and our area of work. When I announced that I was a midwife the medical and surgical nurses all commented on how lucky I was and how easy my job was.

Ok, birth is a normal life experience and most women enjoy a healthy pregnancy, have a normal birth and are independent of cares during their postnatal period. Having said that, I don’t think midwives have an easy job at all. For a start in our position we are expected to have some medical and some surgical skills. We have to be ready to treat episodes as scary as eclamptic fitting and postpartum haemorrage right through to being able to prepare and take a lady to theatre for caesarean. Our position is not so much the physical as the emotional. We deal with mental health issues, people with developmental delay, we look after ladies from all walks of life with differeing expectations. We deal in new life and birth and an important right of passage but we also have to have knowledge and compassion for those who lose their babies and for those who lose their right to birth in a way that equals their expectations. Midwives work hard every day. We are lucky though. Lucky, that on a daily basis, we are invited into something as important as a baby’s birthday. That, for a few hours we have an insight into a woman’s life, her family, her very being. I think that we are so priviledged to be a part of something so beautiful. Midwives are the lucky nurses

Today we had Lily’s party. Her friends were well behaved, well mannered and lovely. Her party was completely opposite to Imogen and Madeline’s a fortnight ago.  It was a joy to have these girls in our home.The time went so quickly and I felt relaxed and happy. Lily had an absolute ball!

Twelve months ago my beautiful friend Trish was in hospital, waiting for her twin boys to be born. Everyone in this household was on tenderhooks, waiting for the message that Sam and Joel had arrived safely.

I met Trish through Belly Belly when I was looking for information on trying to conceive after losing a baby. We joined at almost the same time. There were a few of us. Bec, who had lost her daughter, Georgia, Kirsty, whose son Alex had died, Sarah and her angel Lachlan, Trish with her gorgeous Charlotte and me. We were all on the same journey at around the same time.

Trish and I became friends. When I found out she was pregnant, I cried my eyes out. When I discovered she was having twins I cried even harder. I was so happy for her.

Over the three years I have known her Trish has been there for me through everything. Through the grief of losing WIlliam, to the discovery that I was pregnant. Even though she was waiting to conceive, and her heart must have been aching for her Charlotte and wishing fro that elusive positive pregnancy test, she lifted my spirits as I worried myself senseless over Ivy and Noah’s pregnancy. She celebrated their birth and she has been there through every anniversary for Will, every scary moment with the babies, every happy and sad moment. She has been a true friend, so tonight on the eve of her babies’ first birthday I want to celebrate her!

Congratulations Trish! Hoping you have the happiest of birthing days and that tomorrow is filled with happiness, fond memories of Samuel and Joel’s birth and of new memories made.

Thank you for being the person that you are. You are an amazing woman and I am a better person for having met you. I wish you every happiness and dream come true!

This morning I got out of my nice warm bed when it was still dark and it WASN’T to get up to Ivy! (She was asleep in my bed already). I got up so that I could see Immy, Maddy and AJ off to Canberra and the Snowy Mountains for four days. They have not been away from home for that long and never with people other than grandparents. Sure, there have been a few friend sleepovers but that was only overnight. This trip is a big deal for all of us. I will miss them. I will have to trust that I have taught them right from wrong and that they will behave themselves for four long days. The house was already very quiet with three bodies missing. Lily, although gorgeous, is not the best communicator in the world. Either is Mal. Thank goodness there is Noah’s constant babble going on in the background or I would go completely mad.

I hope the kids have a good time. It is such a great expeience for them, especially to be able to see the snow. It gets cold in Ellalong but it never snows, the best our little country town has to offer up in the way of snow, is the black frost that hits us around July. It just doesn’t cut it, really. They have plans to build snow men and to have snowball fights. I hope the weather sees them coming and brews them up an adequate snow fall. If not, I guess there’s always the man made stuff.

I won’t be able to call them (no mobile phones allowed) and we have been told that public phone access is limited so I am guessing I won’t be hearing from them while they are away. I have hit the chocolate early this morning (terrible emotional eater that I am) to try to compensate, in fact I feel quite ill from all the white chocolate buttons that David has carelessly left sitting on the counter and I have just as carelessly eaten. He should know me better than that…hmmm…perhaps he does.

Ivy started her Augmentin Duo four days ago now and I *think* she is looking a little better today.  What do you think? Aside from the red raw nose from all the tissue usage, I think she has a bit more colour in her face and, yes, even a sparkle in her eyes. Please let this be the end of her chronic infection.

I put Noah to bed for his morning sleep. I said ‘time for sleep Noah’. He said ‘no’. I said ‘yes, have a good sleep’ and walked away. He called out ‘No!’ and giggled to himself (obviously pleased that he had had the last say). He then proceeded to laugh himself senseless for half an hour, everytime he called out ‘No!’. Funny sense of humour, that little guy has. Eventually he fell asleep after calling out one last ‘no’. This afternoon he has been talking and chortling to a pink plastic plate….hmmm a bit too much sugar in that boy’s diet, me thinks.

We had confirmation today. Right sided pneumonia for Ivy and another course of antibiotics.

Well, the mobile phones were a hit! Imogen and Madeline have been begging, pleading and planning for a mobile forever. We kept saying no. Too young, not responsible enough, won’t use it for the right reasons… etc so when their birthday rocked around a phone wasn’t even on the list this year. When they opened their parcel from David and I they were VERY surprised.

Actually, it was my friend Mary who talked me into it. She presented to me the way her boys used theirs. It sounded sensible and in the end (and a few late pick ups, with girls in tears) we decided we would.

Today (three days post phone) I am sick of the unrelenting ring tones and the bleep bleep of the texting.  The girls are pleased as punch though and the ‘mobys’ have been a constant accessory around their necks. It IS kind of nice to see them enjoying their gifts. I just need a good set of ear plugs for the school holidays, I think…they tell me wax is good.

Tomorrow we are partying with 15 children (plus ours). Lordy me!

It was going to be a pamper party but our host was flooded out of her home and her materials waterlogged during last weekends storms. So now we are going to the movies to see Bridge to Terabithia. I read the book in year seven and remember balling my eyes out. Years on, I can’t remember the story at all. Afterwards we are going to Pizza Hut for a late lunch.

In preparation for the many pre pubescent girls descending on our house I scrubbed (as you do). I can see the dining table again, post Starstruck sewing and the bathroom is sparkling. David set about securing our kitchen cupboards with child locks and while he had the electric screwdriver in use he also pulled down Noah’s cot (’carcar’ - everything is a car at the moment) and retired it to the half of the garage that wasn’t squashed by the tree. He has done so well in the big boy bed. His only set back was last night when I asked David to check on him in the early hours. David went to Noah’s bed, after manouvering his way around a sleeping dog, to find it empty. After a few moments of half - asleep confusion, he discovered the sleeping dog on the floor was actually his son. At some stage during the night Noah had gotten out of his bed (on his way to us, we presume) but had not quite made it before sleep overcame him. Too cute! We have tucked him in EXTRA tight tonight.

One of the girls’ friends has been out of school all week so she was unaware of our change of party plans. Flooded in, we now know, they are camping out at the local pub. How did we find this out and track down the missing friend? An intricate phone network is in place that I, as a mother, am completely out of touch with. Maddy called someone, who had someone elses number, who knew someone who had the friend’s phone number. So Immy called the someone else’s number. She didn’t have the someone’s number, who had the friend’s number but she knew somebody else who knew that someone’s number and so Immy called her. When there was no response she sent a text to the somebody else. A few hours later that somebody phoned Immy and told her that the friend was flooded in but she would get a message to her to call Immy… confused? Not as much as I, dear readers! The mind boggles.

I thought I would tell you about our paed appointment.

It went…better than expected. Noah was good. Had made a great recovery from his cold and asthma attack. his weight was great and his development definately to his adjusted age (15.5 months), if not better. The paed was happy with him. He apologised for being away during the Tregenza sicky season and reassured us that he was going to have some urgent appointments available from July. All good news to my ears. Then he saw Ivy, with her goopy ear and her goopy nose and her lack lustre prescence. He conceded she was very ill and we talked about the different things we might try. For now we are going to address her ears and nose with a stronger antibiotic, stay with the hydrogen peroxide, give her flixotide for her asthma/chest and he will see us in two weeks. He also sent us for a chest xray, which showed fluid build up on one side. We are yet to confirm but believe she has pneumonia.

Today she is sick and cranky. The antibiotics have given her the runs and she is off her food but her nose was running clear for a large part of the day and her cough doesn’t seem as wet. Fingers crossed that this will do the trick.

Ivy is still sick. My poor sick bubba. Her ear is goopy again, her nose too and she is clingy and crying today. We called the ENT doctor and got our usual phone diagnosis. So, we will start the ear drops AGAIN.

Three and a bit weeks of illness and we still can’t get in to see the man.

The hydrogen peroxide fizzes and pops and she screams in terror everytime I have to put it in but I will do it because I don’t know what else to do, except take advice from phone doctors. I don’t know how anyone can think that telephonic diagnostics are ok. *SIGH* I feel beaten and defeated because I can’t keep the Ivygirl well.

We are going to see her so called paediatrician tomorrow. I wonder if anything good will come from that. I wonder if it is worth having a paed at all. I wonder if I could do a bridging course and become a paed… probably could but it would all be too late. Ivy and Noah would be grown up by the time I finished. So I will have to rely on these doctors for now.

This morning I scrubbed down our stove. Imogen came flouncing in, looked me up and down in all my pyjama clad beauty (now hot and sweaty from cleaning), sized up the now sparkling oven and said…’oh, look, you made a clean spot’. What am I supposed to make of that? Am I to assume that she believes she lives in squallor? I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Nevertheless, my stove is shiny and I feel better for my troubles.

At lunchtime orange shirted men started milling about my yard. Soon a large crane appeared too. Not long after, the crane was pulling up trees that had fallen in the storm and the orange clad men were up the trees,with their chainsaws, speaking in loud authoritative voices and making weird, manly jokes. You could almost touch the testosterone, the air was thick with it! I phoned David, who quickly caught wiff of male hormones and begged me to take photos AND to send them to him via email so that he could spread the manliness around.

So I did. In the midst of my sick girl’s cries and taking photos for my husband, I noticed a strange thing. Noah (also very male) was running from window to window, watching the crane with much interest. I pointed out the orange clad man up the tree and he was transfixed. I watched him for a while, fascinated that he could be so enveloped in the happenings.. . and Ivy so disinterested in such masculine things. It is times like these that the difference in sex is SO obvious to me.

Night duty tonight and then tomorrow the celebrations begin. Immy and Maddy are turning 11. All those years ago, my body was starting the process of labour. Their birthday…my birthing day.

Where have eleven years gone? When did they grow up to be beautiful young women? It only seems like yesterday that they were Ivy and Noah’s age, gardening (pulling out every single plant) in the backyard, buck naked, except for their flourescent pink gum boots. Now they are into fashion and music. Instead of a dolly for their gift, they want a mobile phone. They are changing and growing every day. It pulls at my heart strings to know that they are walking into adolescence.

Not only are they getting older, so am I. I am not the person that I was 11 years ago. I don’t know if I am a better person. Certainly wiser.

Beware! There is a hurricane around at the moment. Actually, two. Hurricane Noah and Ivy, collectively, the Tregenza Tornado (ok, I know technically they are different but for descriptive purposes we can consider them one and the same). Watch out! Take cover! They will demolish your home! Especially if you leave them unattended for a split second, while you empty your very full bladder. They work as a team, you know. They lie in wait for you to relax and then before you know it the kitchen has been bulldozed. While you are cleaning up the kitchen they make their way to the loungeroom and pull out all the nappies that you have stacked and packed, afterwards moving into the bathroom where they discover your hiding spot for parental toothbrushes and proceed to brush their own teeth, (along with snotty noses and cheeks), brush their hair ("awww, pretty!") and when they have finished grooming themselves with said toothbrushes, they decide that they will copy Mum and scrub the mould from the bathroom tiles! Beware of the storm that will follow when you ring your husband to ask for new toothbrushes (after giving him a full rundown of what has just occured). You will learn the many ways of saying ‘eeewww’ when you are faced with the aftermath of hurricane Ivy and Noah.

Life is NEVER dull with toddler twins in the home!

It was a busy weekend in this household! On Saturday we all went from room to room and purged our lives of excess! Hooray. Admittedly, I still have to scrub the house down post purge and we didn’t make it to our bedroom (that will take a whole weekend in itself, I think) but all the kids’ rooms are done. I can see the floor in Lily’s room and there is actually some drawer space in Immy and Maddy’s wardrobe. The boys room is now free from  a littering of pokemon cards and marbles and my bathroom no longer has a build up of hand creams and body butters. We have cleansed our home of too many pieces of unused linen, clothes that don’t fit anymore and hoarded toys that are broken, don’t work or we are too old to play with. By the end of our day I noticed that I had nine, yes, nine clothes baskets of (what the children consider) dirty laundry.

If I have to wash it, THEY have to sort it! This task became what the kids have lovingly tagged  "the climbing of Clothes Mountain"! In true child fashion, the clothes were all dumped on the kitchen floor in one giant mound (Clothes Mountain), scaled and declared as property of the five mountaineers. *SIGH*

Eventually all clothes were sifted through and the mountain broken down to nine small managable hills to work through. Praying for sunny days for the next week, here.

Lately, the girls have been introducing Ivy and Noah to the joys of dressing up. As little ones, all three girls were avid lovers of dressing as fairies, pirates, Mary with the baby Jesus. Over the years they have dressed as doctors, midwives… when I told them that you didn’t need a doctor to birth  babies (that were shoved underneath oversized t-shirts), characters from Harry Potter, characters from Saturday morning cartoon programs…anyway, you get the picture.

Immy and Maddy started Lily very early on the whole dressing up type of play. When she was barely six weeks old I found her dressed (by the twins) in a large white hat, gloves up to her arm pits and a sparkly white and silver shirt (one of Immy’s favourites), so I guess it doesn’t come as a big surprise to me to find the little twins now dressing up…or should I say being dressed up.

Noah has taken a particular liking to a wig and hat combination! He actually suits being dressed as a girl and the other kids all laugh and clap and call him ‘Norah’. Of course, Noah laps it up and I find him going to the dress up box more and more to extract the Norah wig and hat. I don’t know if it’s because of the feel of the hair and hat or if it has more to do with the high level of attention he achieves with said hat on his head…I’m thinking the latter. Although, he is currently wandering around the house with a handbag over his shoulder…

The end of the week and the weekend has seen Ivy the daredevil take her stunts to new levels. Examples of this include teetering on the arm of a loungechair, licking the frost off the windows in Noah’s room, while I have Noah buck naked on the change table and scaling the ladder of the new bunk beds in Imogen and Madeline’s room. I just want to add here that the girls were asked to close their door for that very reason. Also that the bunks were purchased so Ivy and Noah could have the singles…who am I kidding? Imagine the scary things Ivy could attempt if she were in a bed! I think she may just be the first child known to man who has remained in a cot until adulhood! I am NEVER going to be ready for that child to transition to a big bed! Other scary stunts include; standing up in the highchair, even though she has been strapped in - she’s worked out that if she pulls her arms out of her sleep suit, it also allows her to escape the highchair straps and running along the verandah full force, not seeing that it finishes very soon and making very convincing attempts to fly. Oh dear. She gets into everything…EVERYTHING!

My mum just laughs and makes statements like…’oh you are going to have your hands VERY full with that one’. What does she mean, going to? Aren’t they already full to overflowing?

I know this is really, really late but HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY to all the mummies out there. Hope you had a lovely day. Mine was wonderful. I went shopping on Saturday, woke to brekkie in bed and pressies on Sunday then went out to lunch. It was perfect. The best thing of all was at the end of the day when the big kids ran me a hot bath and decorated the bathroom with candles and infused the air with essential oils. It’s nice to know that, for at least one day of the year, they ‘get’ me. Thanks kids! Love you lots.

I have recieved alot of nappies this week. Good retail therapy does wonders for the soul. My Beetlebums arrived. They are just the most devine minky nappies I’ve ever clapped eyes on. Ivy and Noah  took them for a test drive this morning and christened them well. My Twins In Cloth are here too. Very nice and my Baby Beehinds Bamboo are on their way via my sister in law.

Mum’s cave man nappies are here too and while Ivy loves hers,( ‘Awwww pretty’, she says as she rubs the fur) Noah’s are nothing but pull off material. On his first test drive of his blue cave man nappy, he came wandering out with it in hand. No matter how often I put it on, he pulled it off just as fast. It was the same deal with his orange one. Hmmm… I guess he’s more a minky man!

Last night we finally took delivery of our new bus. (Yay) It was surrounded by much anxiety and stress but finally it is ours. I drove it home from the dealers and must say it was a very smooth ride! I have been gliding here and there all day. Not once did I worry that I wouldn’t make it somewhere. Traditionally we have named our cars. Our last bus’ name was Madge, although I liked to lovingly think of her as Bertha. The kids were trying to think of an adequate name today but the best they could come up with was ‘Heaven’. I told them they needed to keep thinking.

We went to the post office early (in new gliding bus) for our parcels and amongst them we found the photos of Imogen, Madeline and Lily from the Miss Cessnock competition. The girls loved looking at them this afternoon. My little models! They were a long time coming and I thought that we had been taken for a ride, our money extracted and photographers having left the country (so weary and jaded am I) but NO. If you click on the girls names, it will link you to some of the shots. I think they look gorgeous (but I don’t know a mother who wouldn’t think their kids are cute).

Also today (wow how busy was I today?) I met up with a couple of the girls from Belly Belly, Sharon and Dee, to go for a walk. It was great. It was wonderful to get out of the house with some women who had babies around the same age as me. We simply walked and talked. It was a great idea of Sharon’s and now we are seriously considering starting up a Pram Pushing Club. We could advertise our walks at the Early Childhood Nurses Clinic and about town. It could be really good. I’d forgotten how much I actually enjoy walking.

My Scrapbooking class at the school will take off this Friday and I just had to post a photo of the paperbag album that I finished as an example. I am quite proud of it and hope that the children will be very happy with their efforts.

On a sad and final note for tonight. I just wanted to mention one of my online ‘friends’ Chris who sadly passed away on Mother’s Day. She leaves behind her husband and her little son, William. Rest In Peace, Chris. I hope that you are in heaven playing with your angel twins.

Today is a VERY good day! My beautiful, amazing husband has found a way for us to be able to purchase a NEW bus!!!!! WOOHOO!  I never ever knew that I was living with my very own bus fairy. We went looking on the weekend and found the perfect bus for us. We drove it, loved it, the kids loved it, the babies loved it. It came in at a good price and Toyota in Cardiff gave us a more than fair trade in. Our only issue was funding but David worked it out. Things will be tight for a little while but I will have reliable, safe transport for all of us! Gotta be happy with that.

In other news, Ivy said her first two word sentence this morning. We have butterflies everywhere in our house (it is a symbol we use to acknowledge William) and they are everywhere outside in the garden too, so the girl has grown up with our winged friends. Anyway, she was playing with a butterfly on my bed this morning and she says, as clear as day… " Awwww, pritty b-fly" (Awww, pretty butterfly). It was so gorgeous and clear! I’d forgotten how amazing it is when babies start talking. As if that wasn’t enough, she made Imogen’s day when she called out "Immy!" from her carseat this afternoon. She is such a smart little button. She wanted to go outside this afternoon and was tapping on the door. I explained to her that we would have to wait until Noah woke up and she pottered away, happy with that. About half an hour later, we heard Noah cry out. Well, she was up and at his door within seconds, saying ‘Nono, Nono’ (Noah’s nickname for himself is ‘Nono’). As soon as I opened the door she was in there babbling away to her brother about something that I didn’t get. Obviously he did because as soon as I had put him on the floor they both made their way to the door and Ivy started her tapping again!

If she wants something that her sisters have, she puts her little hand out and cries "share, SHARE!" or "Ta, Ta" and the volume escalates if it’s not given straight away. Miss bossy pants.

Noah is smart too. He lets her do all the talking and reaps the rewards! Very clever lad that one.

Ivy had a haircut yesterday, her first. She now has a perfectly adorable fringe to go with her little curls.

I’ve dobbed myself and Mum into making eight ABBA costumes for Starstruck (Mum if you read this before I have a chance to talk to you, don’t have a stress out, it will be FINE). Oh and eight A-line skirts too. We have a month to do them all. GULP

Tracey started her new job today and I miss her already.

Leanne finished up and I met my new counsellor Emma. She seems ok.

AJ made the football team.

Lily made it to the Zone Cross Country

Immy and Maddy have just registered for their next dance eisteddford, they have solos in the school choir and are both rehersing for Starstruck.

Maddy had a new friend over for the weekend and she was lovely. Maddy seemed really happy.

Things are looking up! It’s Mother’s day on Sunday, wonder what may blow my way.

There is nowhere else in the world that I can go to the toilet to discover an Action Man staring down at me from a toilet paper pyramid. My kids can really make my day. make me smile, forget my worries with something so simple. Oh to be a child again.

We have had such a busy, busy week here. My head is spinning. We have had sickness and lots of blood tests. First for Ivy and then for Maddy. Maddy found a lump in her neck some time ago. It hasn’t gone away. She has some other things going on too - tired, bruising, nose bleeds. She’s lost 6kg. Her paed has ordered some tests and so we have gone through the motions of having them done. My heart will not let it steal itself into thinking the worst. It’s most likely nothing. A prolonged infection and the tests are just a better to be safe than sorry kind of thing. I guess we’ll find out, when I ring the doctor.

Noah, after a month of pretending to walk, has finally taken the plunge and is pottering around the house, arms out like chicken wings, for balance. It’s very cute to watch but another reminder that my babies are growing up way too fast. Last week I let them feed themselves a yoghurt for the first time, with hilarious results. Thankfully it was the end of the day and I could strip them both down and put them in the bath and their yoghurt infused clothing through the wash.

Ivy in true baby girl fashion has a fetish for shoes and handbags. She follows me around most days with shoes in her hands grizzling for me to put them on her. They are not necessarily HER shoes, anybody’s will do. She says "schoo..schoo, (pushes shoe into nearest family member’s hand) SCHOOOOO!!!!!"  Very cute MOST of the time.

I have had a bit of a cloth nappy binge this week. My ultimate in retail therapy. Sad for some, heaven for others. I purchased 4 new Baby Beehind Bamboo nappies, two Lou Lou nappies and some Twins In Cloth nappies. Mum has been busy too. She has been knitting madly and produced a gorgeous soaker for Ivy and for Noah, she has almost finished a pair of blue and red longies. Oh, drool. I LOVE my mum! Next on the nappy making for her are some cave man nappies. I have cut some faux fur and some pink fleece, which she is going to line with PUL and put some bamboo fleece in for the absorbent layers. I’m hoping for a cute yet functional nappy for all occasions!

Just wanted to share also, my kids’ obsession for Beanie Bears. I took some pics of them yesterday, with all of the bears. Just when I think we have MORE than enough bears in our home, more find their

way in!!! I think the girls first started collecting when it was more fun to get toys for chores, rather than money and it has continued on as a love for all things Beanie.

Not much else to write about at the moment. We are on the countdown for Kelly’s impending birth, so not wanting to go too far away. One of the girls Dee, from Belly Belly, came out to talk to Kel about VBAC. I think it was really good to get the perspective from someone who has done it successfully. I was really grateful to Dee for it. I’ve told her before that she is my VBAC pin up girl! Someone I really admire.

Let’s start this entry off on a happy note. One of my friends brought around an old, blue, plastic, ride in car. I think this car has gone through a few midwives’ children. It’s old and battered and has pieces missing. The steering wheel is wobbly and there is a piece of rope tied to the front so that it can be pulled along. Noah LOVES it! We have had the car for just under a week and there has not been a day when I haven’t found him sitting in it. He will not relinquish it for anyone, though many have tried. It is the first thing that Noah has ever claimed for himself. His ‘carcar’. On the first day of his love affair with ‘carcar’ I found him, after all the kids had dragged him around all day, planted in front of the television. Anyone who knows Noah will find this amazing as he doesn’t usually stay still for anything and yet, there he sat in his car for over an hour before he demanded that Lily take him for another ride. In the end I had to pick him up, kicking and screaming out of ‘carcar’ and into his highchair for dinner and a bath. Within minutes of these tasks being completed, I found him, once again in the blue car. It is the first thing he asks for in the morning and if we are out he will say to me ‘go - car’. He loves it more than anything else. His grandmother thinks he is a petrol head. His father thinks it is cute and funny. I am amazed at how these things are woven into the male being. The other day I found him in the car saying ‘Broom, Broom!!!’ How did he know that? No one taught him as far as I know. Is it a male thing, that they just know about cars and have a love for them, even from a really young age? At least it will make birthdays easy, knowing that my boy loves all things vehicle.

Our bus came back to us on Friday, our wallets over $1000 lighter! It came home with a dire warning that we need to get rid of it as there was more breaking in the old bus and we would soon see our purses emptier. Dave is now scouring all the internet spaces and car lots that sell buses. How we are ever going to afford a new bus is beyond me but I guess I can let the man dream.

Today I tried to get Ivy some more medical attention from her paed ( Dave says I can’t mention names - for fear of being sued so for naming purposes he shall be known as Micky Shortergan) After a nightmarish week before where we finally saw Micky on the Thursday, only to have him charge us a hundred bucks for nothing and then turning around the very next day to see the ENT doctor who put the grommets in her ears (for naming purposes will be known as Associate Professor Skippy) only to be told that there was nothing in her ears and to go home and get over it, Ivy spent the weekend getting sicker and sicker. With no antibiotics and no drops to fight off her imaginary infection, by Sunday she had temperatures in the 39s. Come monday we thought we would be able to get some help. You’d think that, wouldn’t you? If it were your baby, you would do everything you could to get her better. I’m sure if these doctor’s children required medical attention, they would NOT be fobbed off. They would expect the very best in care, right? Ok, forget that they are doctors and that they could probably treat their own babies for just a second… they would want them to be seen. That’s all I wanted. For someone to see her, concede she was very ill and treat her accordingly. Easy, right? Wrong.

We phoned Micky Shortergan, who promptly told us that Ivy was not his patient and not his problem to refer back to Skippy, as he put her grommets in. Fair enough. Even though I beg to differ. I think she IS his patient and his problem but anyway. He IS a paediatrician after all and shouldn’t a paediatrician look after his child patients? Besides that, he referred her onto Skippy for care, so doesn’t Ivy become his problem by default? I digress…

We called Skippy’s rooms to be confronted with an answering machine stating that his rooms were closed for the day. GREAT. So we called back Micky. His receptionist said she would get him to call us back. In the meantime we tried to get into our local medical centre. Ok, if you are happy to wait three days and see the doctor nobody likes. *SIGH* Of course the paed never called back and Ivy is still as unwell as ever. Nothing has been resolved regarding her imaginary ear infection. My poor babygirl.

Tomorrow is a new day however…bring on tomorrow!

Here are some positive affirmations for tomorrow;

tomorrow the big kids will be back at school (YAY)

tomorrow I WILL speak to a competent doctor and I WILL get Ivy the help that she needs

tomorrow I won’t feel so angry and bitter with the medical community up here in the boonies, I may even thank one of them

tomorrow I will feel like a good mother again and I won’t have to stress about my baby being so sick anymore.

Ahhh, tomorrow.

Ok, Easter is officially over in this house! If I ever see, smell or taste another chocolate egg again, it will be too soon! UGH, chocolate overload, my friends is NOT a pretty sight in a thirty - something woman. OOOOHHHH, my belly. I know, I know, no sympathy for self inflicted wounds. It was fun until last night. Then, I just needed for all chocolate to be gone from our home. I am seriously starting the cabbage soup diet on Wednesday! Anything to get away from chocolate. I need to purge all those impurities from my system, so that I can be ready…for Christmas, the ultimate day in over indulgence!!!! LOL! Seriously though, I am sick of chocolate. If I had to gage seratonin levels due to eating of said indulgence, I would be waging a bet that I would be considered an EXTREMEMLY happy person, right now. I’m sure those levels of happy hormone are dangerous.

Had a nice quiet, rainy day. The boys had their access visit with their mother (always a not fun time for the family afterwards) and the girls, babies, Dave and I pottered off to the local video store, where the rest of the town had already been, so we were only able to borrow the DVDs that nobody wanted, Oh and the kids flicks that we have seen 1000 times before. No, I jest. We did get Charlotte’s Web. When I watched it, all I could wonder was…is Dakota Fanning aging at all???? I think that girl is one of those kids who is never going to grow up. She’ll be 30 and still look six!  The girls enjoyed it and another pre teeny type movie called Step Up. Immy, my little drama, dancing, all round performer, romantic, thought it was "the best movie she’d ever seen". (She says that with every movie that has a hunky male dancer in it, I’ve noticed). We ate fish and chips and generally slothed around the house.

I want to tell you about the recent move in bath time activities in this house. It used to go something like this; The big kids run a bath and take turns going in, as pairs, sometimes topping up the water with warmer additions. While this is progressing, I feed and bath the babies and by the time they have had a little play, one of the big girls are usually out to help me dry and dress the pair.

This is how it has gone of late. I ask the big kids to start the bath routine. No one moves. The babies get fed and I start their bath routine, continually reminding the others that dinner will be ready soon. Still there is little movement until I redirect their energy (or lack there of) into running the tap for baths. Most nights I get asked if they can skip…what is that? As a pre teen, I think you are at your smelliest. It’s a time when a kid REALLY needs to wash, why do they suddenly think they can get away without cleaning themselves???? When I argue my point, I am then asked if they can shower instead of bath and even though I constantly remind them that a shower uses up to ten litres of water a minute, they do not budge. Another new pre teen thing. I compromise and say a short one only and all girls in at once and then both boys. Anything for five fresh bodies at the dinner table. Most nights they are pretty good but some nights I shudder to think what my family is doing for the water supply in NSW.Not only am I getting rebellion in the 9 - 11 year old bracket, the babies have decided that they like to move and splash and try to turn on taps while I am bathing them. Sometimes, I think I come out of the bathroom wetter than them! They have started this game (for want of a better word) where as soon as I get onto my hands and knees, they splash me. If I stand up, they get up, throw their legs up and over the top of the bath and yell "geeowwwwt" (get out in twin speak). I get down again to wash them and immediately they start in with the splashing and the squealing and the giggling. Sometimes they slip and slide and my heart jumps into my throat but mostly the are limbre little bath pixies, who move so quickly, it’s sometimes hard to catch them to wash their crawling feet (where the tops of their feet are blackened with floor mank) or to wash the buttery sandwich leftovers out of their hair. Some nights I am exhausted just from bath time alone, mostly I laugh though and enjoy the moments. Knowing, all too well that there will come a day in 9 - 11 years time, when they won’t want to bath, pretend to bath, skip their bath or when I say bath, think I mean shower.

My next gripe for today is about girls not wanting to brush their hair over  the school holiday period. Ok, I understand that it gets a little old having your hair raked up into a ponytail every day and reminded that it is nit season for 90% of the school year and I DO allow them some slack when school break comes but really, don’t they know that if they don’t brush their hair for a number of days that it WILL get knotty and if it does become encrusted with dredlocky knots, that when your mother comes along to brush them out it IS going to hurt. ALOT.

My mum used to say to me, you can’t put an old head on new shoulders, that kids need to learn the hard way. Ok, but can’t they learn the hard way with shiny, neatly brushed hair? Is that too much to ask? *SIGH* I guess I’m missing the point here. I know Mum is right, they will learn through their own mistakes but why can’t they do it later, when they are older and living in their own flat, with a housemate or a boyfriend to (kindly) brush out their knots, why now, when there are three long haired beauties (and another one rapidly growing hers) and a mother (whose hair is VERY short) who just doesn’t get it???

When my own long hair knotted ouches got too much for my mum, when I was in fifth grade, strangely enough, she took me to "Bruno’s" and had it all cut off in a time when being able to sit on your hair during school was REALLY cool. I can’t seem to do that to my girls. I sigh and moan and carry on but when it all boils down to it, I like their hair long. Whinge two over.

Finally my last purge of disgust comes when I discovered that Ivy’s newly grometted ears (actually only her left) were discharging blood and pus. Of course it was a public holiday. For city dwellers, this probably wouldn’t pose much of a problem but for those of you living in the boonies, like us,it’s easy to understand how something as simple as going to a GP, for a script of antibiotics, to fight off obvious infection, can become a living nightmare.

To start with there was NOTHING open in Cessnock. We phoned the hospital, to ask if we should present there. We knew what the problem was, it wouldn’t take long. Their answer?

"We are very busy, if you think she needs to come in, then you’d better bring her up but remember, this is an emergency department. We can’t give you anymore information over the phone". That was it. What were we supposed to do with that? She was by no means an emergency but if we didn’t do something she could become one.

So we then moved onto the next hospital (remember, we are out in the boonies here, friends) they, at least had an after hours GP service but the receptionist told us our area was not covered and so we could either present to ED or have a phone conversation with an RN. We took the RN. She was very direct and thought that young Ivy best be seen by a GP. She phoned our local hospital who gave HER the exact same speel as us. When she came back to the phone, she offered us a long wait at said hospital or an appointment at the next town hospital (3/4 of an hour away) to see a doctor. We took the appointment. That went very smoothly and with our script in hand we set about finding a pharmacy. Easy, right? No, not easy at all. We had to drive another twenty minutes to find one. On the way home I realised that Ivy’s secretions had not been swabbed and that was a bugbear with her paediatrician, that they never swabbed! I ummed and arrhed for a while but in the end I started the antibiotics and gave her another dose of panadol. I guess I’ll deal with my lack of swab results when next I see the paed!

Wow, this has turned into a monster post. Good thing there are photos to break it up!! LOL. It’s late and with all that off my chest, I think I am going to bedfordshire!

To quote the Dixie Chicks;

Godspeed, little man,

Sweet dreams, little man.

Oh, my love will fly

To you each night

On angels wings.

Godspeed, Sweet Dreams.

Oh William. I miss you.

… when the Terrible Tregenzas make their way into Taronga for the day! I don’t know who was watching who yesterday when we went to the zoo, we went to see the chimps and as I was standing there, with my wild brood of children, it suddenly occured to me that it was crazy taking the zoo to the zoo. I didn’t need to go all the way into Sydney to see the monkies’ antics, I could have stayed at home and just observed my own children for a few minutes!

Seriously though, we had a fantastic day. A special celebratory day, a rare field trip, in memory of our very special boy. The sunshine was gorgeous and the view was amazing. The kids had a lovely time, even the babies. We went to see the tigers. Everytime one of these massive beasts roamed past the window, Ivy yelled out ‘cat, CAT!!!!’ and because of all the exotic animal smells that were around, Noah was constantly questioning whether he had a ‘pppprooo?’ (poo in Noah language). We saw a porqupine, which Immy described as half wombat half echidna and Maddy thought looked like a wombat in a tutu! Lily loved the iguanas and the boys just enjoyed every single thing. Their eyes were bright and happy and clear, their smiles infectious. At 3:06pm, one of the girls started to quietly sing Happy Birthday to our angel boy and just as quietly, everyone joined in, including David. It was just one of those really memorable days and was well worth the effort.Maddy was right, William would have LOVED the zoo.

We got home very late and slept in this morning, which would have been ok, except that Ivy had to be at Newcastle Private at 9:15am for her grommets. Thankfully,a good friend, Tracey, had offered to mind Noah and the big kids all had school.

You know those people who come into your life at just the right time and are everything that you prayed for? Well, Tracey is one of those people. When I was floundering with PND and everything else that goes along with mothering babies, Tracey magically appeared. She was one of the girls’ friend’s mothers and I didn’t know her very well to begin with but we have become very good friends and I will be forever grateful that she came into my life when she did. I am very lucky that way. There are always good people coming into my life.

Anyway, we got there. Ivy was not a happy camper because she had been Nil By Mouth and had missed out on breakfast (God forbid that Ivy miss out on ANY kind of food but to miss out on brekkie is like missing out on Lotto, when you had the winning ticket, as far as Ivy is concerned)! She rallied well though when everyone started commenting on how cute she was and then when her mother had to put on a silly theatre hat, she was all smiles!

I did ask the anaesthetist to give her a long acting drug, to help her sleep for a long time. Sadly, he thought I was joking. Instead he gave her something which induced a kind of hyperactivity that I had never seen in a little girl. The recovery nurses, although lovely, could not get rid of her fast enough!!! She ran them ragged! Wouldn’t let them put the oxygen probe on her finger or toe and kept ripping all her name bands off, wriggling, dancing, swinging. Oh Ivy!

I have to say I was so impressed with the whole hospital experience. The doctor was nice, professional yet kind, the anaesthetist efficient. The nurses, lovely. There was none of the usual operating theatre pomp and circumstance. (Being a nurse/midwife, it really means something when you, as a parent, are treated well) The we are better than you mentality was just not there. Ivy went in dressed in her regular clothes, no scary gowns and when I went to recovery to be with her, I didn’t have to gown up. It made the whole surgery process alot easier and less overwhelming for the both of us, I think.

Now I just need to get rid of the kid’s terrible colds and asthma and all will be well. Noah is very wheezy still and all of the kids, yep, all seven, have had heavy head colds for the last week. I think I am thankful that the school holidays are rapidly approaching. We all need a break from routine.

My babies are growing up too fast. Ivy is now walking all over the loungeroom and can even corner now. All that in just a few days. Soon they’ll both be running. Noah is taking up to eight steps before he flings himself into whoever’s lap is convenient.

This morning we made a decision as to what we are going to do for William’s third birthday and my mind and my heart finds itself thinking more and more of my little boy and what will never be. Sometimes the feelings surrounding his birth and death are all still so raw, it is like it was yesterday. The tears always fall easily around this time but this year, has been particularly emotional. Last year was so busy with two newborn babies and the first year, I was ‘allowed’ to celebrate and grieve my son. This year, many want to forget, think I should be ‘over’ him, think I should just concentrate on Ivy and Noah and feel lucky to be given another chance. I am. I will be eternally grateful for all that I have been given. Especially the chance to watch Ivy and Noah grow up. All my children are miracles. None of them easy to conceive , to carry or to birth. Even with this knowledge, even being thankful for all that I have doesn’t take that emptiness away, that hole that is left where William should be. It is a feeling of being incomplete, in some way. David doesn’t talk about WIlliam much anymore. I know he is dealing with things in his own way but sometimes I am hurt that he doesn’t acknowledge his firstborn son. All the girls and AJ accept William and talk about him freely. I have noticed an escalation in their comments and questions about him lately and wonder if they realise they are doing it or if it is a subconcious thing because it is getting close to the 2nd of April.

We’ll do a balloon release again this year, as we always do on his angel day but for his birthday, which I think should be a celebration of the amazing baby boy that William was, we are going to go to the zoo. I think at three, William would have enjoyed the zoo and the girls agree. Because we live a long way from Sydney we’ll have to start the day early but it should be a lovely day. It feels better now, knowing what we are going to do.

I just needed to get all of that down this morning. There might be more later. Who knows what the day might bring?