Good bye 2010

I won't be sad to see you go!!

As a fitting end to 2010 Enya woke up this morning with a gummy eye. Now I don't know what it's like in other parts of the world but in my corner of Germany life comes to a stand still between Christmas and New Years. Neither the Paediatricians nor the opthalmologists were open today, I landed up having to go to the emergency service at the local childrens hospital to get a prescription for eye drops (and even their service only started at 9am) which involved an hour and a half wait. Z is at his father's restuarant today so I had 2 bored girls to entertain and the waiting room is just chairs in a corridor- NOT FUN. THe only positive about this was that Enya got a thorough check up- yes, she has started another cold/cough having been sniffle free for about 3 days! At least I go into this weekend knowing her lungs and ears are clear.

Now hoping for a healthy 2011,

Happy new year to you all

Groan

Guess who got infected by her darling oldest daughter? While Ciara is galivanting at Kindergarten today, I'm creeping around at home, trying desperately to avoid swallowing. My beloved child has given me tonsillitis! I mean come on, tonsillitis is a kiddies sickness, I should be able to handle this. But instead it has knocked me for six and I've turned into a whingy monster.

Bad news is that Z is complaining of a sore throat this morning and if it has knocked me for six, Z will be down and out for a week!

The positives are Ciara was over it within 4 days and is back to normal (except for reduced sleep needs AGAIN, hello 5am wake up calls ;0) and Enya hasn't got sick (yet).

I don't know.....

....perfectly articulated, is now Enya's standard answer to everything.

"Enya, where is your lunch box" " I don't know"
"What do you want to drink" "I don't know"
"Enya, can you fetch me two pull ups" "I don't know"

Ciara has only used it once this week, at Kindergarten:
"Ciara, where are your glasses" "I don't know".
Three days later the glasses still haven't turned up, we think she tripped while running outside and they disappeared under the masses of fallen leaves. Everybody is keeping an eye out for them but I fear that we will land up replacing them (and then Murphy's law states they will reappear!). The only question is do we replace them now or wait until next month when we have an opthomology appointment anyway, so the eyes can be remeasured for new glasses.

As fate would have it Enya stood on her glasses the same evening and flattened the nose pieces so both my girls are spectacle free this week!

PS S@%T! Ciara's just come through asking for a "cough cough" bucket and a temp of over 38 C, wanna bet she's caught the first tummy bug of her kindergarten career?

So the glasses

As we've had the glasses now for a week I suppose I should update how things are going. I imagine you have a fairly good idea, given that the girls are wearing them in all the recent photos and I haven't been whinging about the glasses.

The girls are really good about wearing them, they even ask for them when they get up in the morning or from a nap. When they get tired they do start taking them off and that is then a sign for us to start getting ready for bed. That they have taken so well to their glasses shows me that they do see a lot better with them and that they really are necessary (RATS!!).

The only problem we've had so far is at playgroup, one of the other little girls keeps ripping them off Ciara and Enya's faces. They'll have to learn to defend their glasses!

In other news Enya now has whatever bug Ciara had on Monday, so we had a morning just for us while Ciara went to playgroup. Enya and I bought the rucksacks for kindergarten which are adorable and have the breast strap so the shoulder straps won't keep sliding off during the Wedensday rambles. We followed that up by going for hot chocolate which turned into a cuddle and then nap session as the fever really began to hit Enya. Poor little mite is now curled up in her bed sleeping after a dose of para.cetamol. Ciara didn't do too well either at the playgroup as she missed her sidekick. They said she needed lots of cuddles and was very tearful, she perked up though as soon as she saw Enya and myself coming early to collect her.

Hopeful it will all be back to normal tomorrow for play therapy!

The rest of the long weekend

This weekend was Kultur Pur in Siegerland, it is a festival with live music acts, comedians and various street performers and that's just in the tents! The setting is a sports field in the middle of the forest. In the grounds surrounding the tent complex there are other forms of entertainment available, especially for the younger visitors (labyrinth or clowns etc.).



WE decided to take advantage of the glorious weather we were having and met up there with friends on Sunday afternoon. It was absolutely heaving but we had a great afternoon in the fresh air nonetheless. I was especially proud of Ciara and Enya as we survived the whole afternoon (including a fairly long walk from the car to the festival and back again) without the pram and we didn't lose the girls once! I did however put both girls into pull ups for the visit as we had a long drive to get there and the toilets, from past experience, often have long queues-my girls when they need to go, need to go NOW!

So without further ado: some photos from Kultur Pur
Enya meeting "Francois Blanc"

Enya in the Chime Labyrinth-all doorways had different objects hanging in them

Magnetic attraction between girls and dirt?

Ciara in the music garden, all "instruments" are made of everyday objects like pipes or pots or wheels



Poor old Ciara has one weakness and that is her stomach, on Monday she woke up with a temperature and was not herself the whole day, thank goodness it was a public holiday so I had help. She was exceptionally cuddily, hardly ate anything and kept saying she was sick. Finally last night she threw up after asking for the cough cough bucket, our warning sign that an eruption is imminent. She is incredibily good about telling us beforehand and usually gets everything in the bucket, for which I'm extremely grateful! She is still off colour this morning though.

Oy vey!

Things got a little suspicious when Ciara asked to cuddle repeatedly this afternoon after we'd been to the carwash. She even came and lay on me when I went to sit (okay lie) on the sofa. However she didn't have a temperature and had eaten the same as Enya had all day so I wasn't worried. Things got a little more interesting when she got a wicked case of hiccoughs, but she still was smiling so I wasn't too worried.

Then she started puking.....projectile vomiting and retching so hard my stomach muscles were aching in sympathy. Poor baby cleaned her system out and then just wanted her bed. I'll probably have mattress duty again tonight!

I really had hoped all the sick bugs had left the house, we need a couple of healthy weeks now!!

Will I ever learn?

We've had to start Ciara on the eyedrops! Thankfully the infection has barely started so it won't turn as gunky as Enya's but I really thought Ciara had managed to escape this one.

We had this problem in the NICU as well, if we commented that something was going well, it would come back and bite us in the butt!

Lesson now will be learnt. Keep my mouth shut!

So far so good

I wish I had lots of new stuff to write about but we have been in hiding pretty much the last week as we don't want to spread our germs around (what can I say we're selfish that way).

Thankfully it looks like our sick period coming to an end and so long as Ciara doesn't develop the eye infection (which is looking increasingly unlikely) we will have a jam packed week, next week.

I did get an evening out last night (thanks Z, cabin fever was biting deep!) and have started summer preparations- Ciara now has a summer hat and some capri leggings. I even got to go to the movies, I watched Agora which I thought was brilliant- I love historical films. I just wish I had had a chance to watch Avatar
on the big screen as everyone has been raving about it.

On the up

So I went out and invested in a disinfectant conditioner so all the bedding and more importantly all Enya's bed companions (the soft and fluffy ones) can be washed. I've also, for the first time, bought hand disinfectant so that we can hopefully keep the eye infection from spreading to Ciara, although the Eye Guy wasn't very optimistic yesterday. Thankfully even with the few doses of eyedrops Enya has had so far, we can already see a huge improvement. No longer copious amounts of green secretions we need to clean away every hour or two, although when she wakes from naps or sleeping her eyelashes are still glued together. The one disadvantage of her disgustingly long eyelashes, they are really difficult to clean properly!

Brighter news is, I've found a weekly play group being run at our local Mother Center. It is on Thursday mornings, children between the ages of 1 and 3 can be dropped off for 3 hours and supervised by a qualified adult while the parent has some time off. Since we've got back from the Kur the girls have been asking me everyday about "grayploop" (their word for play group) as they loved having other kids to play with and really enjoyed the playgroup in the clinic. This bodes well for a successfull Kindergarten start in August, but I was looking for a short term substitute to keep the enthusiasm going in the meantime. I'm going to have a look next week (we have to rearrange the play therapy appointment to allow this) but hopefully it will all go well and the girls will begin the week after. The woman at the Mother Center said that they apparently do lots of singing and crafts during the group as well as that they have a small garden attached where the kids can play outside in the warmer weather.

And the next one bites the dust

So we have the next one on antibiotics!

Enya developed a raging eye infection over the weekend and now is on AB eyedrops and eyecream for the next week. I won't post photos of how she looks, just picture Enya with 2 black eyes swollen to slits and with green secretions glueing her eyelashes together. Like I said not a pretty picture! And I won't even describe the what we had to do to get an appointment at the Eye Guy.

In the meantime Ciara and I are feeling much better, although my best friend, Doxy (AB), has a heck of a kick to it- for about an hour after I take it I have to lie down as I'm as nauseous as when I was pregnant with twins.

Continuing that train of thought, I was warned by both the doc and pharmicist that the contraceptive pill doesn't work reliably when taking my AB, so Z and I need to "take extra precautions". I had to smother a grin both times, if only they knew it takes a lot more than AB to get me pregnant!

Ciara now leading 2:1

for visits to casualty (ER).

While getting her ready for her bath on Wedensday we noticed she seemed to be blue, not just in her hands and feet but also her lips. We had noticed something similiar a few other times in the past week but wrote it off to bad lighting as by the time we got to better lighting it was always gone. On Wedensday though, the lighting was good and it was very obvious, so hey ho off to the Children's hospital we went. We were seen right into an examination room and had less than a 5 minute wait before the doctor came in! First question out of his mouth after I told our sorry tale was does she have a congenital heart problem, so I had to mention the ASD. His next comment made me laugh though- "but she had a normal post natal development, right?". So then I had to explain the whole micropreemie born at 25 weeks weighing 690g bit.

In the end he said it was just an overreaction of the autonomic nervous system (due to her illness) that caused the blue colouration and was not unusual and to expect her to do it again for the next few days (which she promptly has done). Yet again an overreaction from me, kids really should come with instruction books- with a large diagnosis of error section! Thankfully she is much better though and not at all cranky in comparison to how she has been.

I, on the other hand, have a new best friend called Doxy, as after feeling better for a few days things have gone rapidly downhill. After a horrendous night with the whole left side of my face (especially my teeth) hurting, I have landed up on antibiotics for a sinus infection. The instructions with the AB's was to take things easy which made me laugh (and then wince as all movements hurt right now), but things should get just as rapidly better as they did worse so hopefully I'll get back to happier posting soon.

Home!!

In the end we landed up coming home early from the Kur (it was supposed to end today, we've been home since Saturday), it just wasn't worth the stress anymore. By Thursday I was coming down with a humdinger of a cold/flu and so wasn't able to participate in many of my therapies/activities. Then on Friday Ciara spiked another 40C temperature (3rd illness in 3 weeks) and the decision was made to come home early.

I'm really glad we came home when we did as the last few days have been horrendous with Ciara repeatedly spiking 40+C temperatures and refusing to stay in her bed at nights (me playing baby mattress as Z still wasn't being allowed near her). It is just so much easier to manage everything in our own 4 walls, where we are master of our own timetables and don't have noisy neighbours waking up the sick angels just when we've finally gotten them to sleep.

We did land up seeing our paed yesterday as it had been suggested to me at the Kur clinic if things got worse to get a second medical opinion. While things were not much worse, they were also no better so off to the paed we went- "viral infection" was the diagnosis and "we're doing everything right, just keep on going, it should be better tomorrow".

Ciara of course blew that out the water by throwing such a temp spike last night that we landed up doing cool calf swaddles to try bring her temp down (we had a 2 hour wait before we could give her her next dose of anti pyretic). Today as the day wears on she is creeping up again into the 39C range which means tonight is probably going to be another mess.

I feel an absolute mess too with a sexy deep Marlene voice, a foghorn cough and sinuses 10 seconds before implosion, but hey at least I don't have anyone lying on my chest right now for the first time in days (I managed to convince Ciara to nap in our bedroom without me!).

So in summary: all still sick as dogs but very happy to be home. There really is nowhere as good as home!

PS Enya still surprisingly chirpy with no fever although she too has the foghorn cough. She's also lost her appetite and found a donkeys, which can only be good since both girls have lost about half a "hard fought for" kilo in the last 3 weeks.

Keeps getting better!!

Last week I heard one of the kids staying here had landed up in ICU with Rota virus, then yesterday we had the air ambulance air lift another of the kids out of here, this time due to burns. I think I need a Kur from this Kur!

just call me mattress

It didn't take long did it!?! I wasn't feeling too well last night so I went to bed early, as I lay there just getting ready to doze off, I heard Enya coughing. Two seconds later I heard her gushing. Hop out of bed, run to their room, fling open the door, grab her out of bed and hold her over the cough cough bucket (and yes that is what they both refer to this bucket as, we had nothing to do with the naming!) to receive the second gush. She also had a very high temperature and so I landed up dragging the cot out of their room into ours and that was the end of my early night. Enya hasn't puked since and we think she actually just has a very bad cold as opposed to the gastric bug that Ciara had\has. We had thought Ciara was back to normal but after giving her some milk this morning she puked again and has been very lethargic and puky all day, at least her temperature is down. I have pretty much spent the entire day today with both of them draped over my chest, mostly lying on the bed. For some reason Daddy just isn't cutting it this illness, only mommy is allowed to cuddle with them and carry them. And walking that is just not in the programm at all today i.e. they have to be carried or cuddled at all times. And to crown it off tonight Ciara puked all over me again after I gave her some water. Motherhood definitely has it's moments!

This Kur is turning out to be the complete oppsite of relaxing!

The cough cough bucket

A little history first: when Enya gets carsick she usually gives us a bit of warning by saying "cough cough" (maybe TMI but it's usually after the first retch but before anything solid comes up).

So on to the present: I thought something was a bit off this morning when Ciara was exceptionally cuddily, then I heard her retch. Of course we're away in the Allgäu right now on the mother child Kur (which had been going great up till now, but another story and another time) so we have to follow the rules here. I phoned the night nurse to report that Ciara was off colour and her reaction was as long as Ciara hadn't actually vomitted she could still attend her therapy and playgroup sessions today. No sooner had she said that then Ciara vomitted, the question resolved itself nicely. Enya was still allowed out but now Ciara was banned to stay in our flat. To be honest she hasn't been up for anything all day, she has been draped listlessly over Z or my chest all day and mumbling the whole time about her cough cough bucket (her faithful companion!!).

As of this evening she has a 40°c temperature and is very lethargic, thankfully she is drinking well (water and peppermint tea!?!) although understandably she has no appetite. Boy am I glad Z came down to join us last weekend (another epic story to be told another time)as alone in a strange enviroment this would have been very hard to manage!

I really hope this is the same bug that has burned through the rest of the patients here as it seems to be a 24 hour bug which means Ciara would be back on her feet tomorrow and we only have to get Enya through it then (so far Enya is as fit as a fiddle)

coughing

Everything remains in status quo.

Enya has developed a lovely phlegmy cough but remains her usual quirky happy self so we're not too worried. Ciara just has the permanant dribble from the nose and Z remains down for the count, hopefully he'll start feeling better soon!

The only positives are at least I'm still healthy (yet again the last man standing) and secondly the girls are sleeping later in the mornings (averaging 14 hours overnight).

We also finally got our speech therapy assessment, 5 months after we were referred. At the time we requested it, Enya was only eating lightly textured purees and maybe two or three bites of bread, everything else she would refuse. She has improved dramatically since then (tonight she ate a tuna salad tortilla-totally surprised me as we've never tried tuna before, nevermind a tortilla), but still tends to pocket food under her tongue and has a delayed swallow. This appointment would have been really helpful 6 months ago, now I'll be happy if we just get some advice how to encourage her to clear her mouth quicker.

Too late too late..

Well having finally arranged for the girls to get the swine flu vaccination, I've had to cancel the appointment again today! The earliest appoinment we could get was for next week. In the meantime Z started getting sick on the weekend, the girls started about a day later with coughing and sniffles. The girls have been weathering this sickness really well, Z.... not so much. He finally went to the doc yesterday and was told he likely has H1N1 flu! What do you think are the chances that the girls started with something different within a day of him starting the flu! Oh well, we were nervous about the vaccinations anyway and now it is superfluous.

Now we just have to get Z back on his feet!

Sniffles

We're all down with the sniffles right now and with the weather here being so miserable and none of us sleeping well, we are all of us feeling a bit sorry for ourselves.



On the bright side I've finally finished the blanket for our landlady's eagerly awaited new grandchild, after umming and aahing about it for the last few months. I am now just awaiting the arrival announcement before handing it over, hopefully she likes it as the colours are based on the decoration scheme of the baby's bedroom.


Today I went back to the store where we'd bought the girls birthday present from in the mood for a fight (think tired, sick and extremely cranky). I'd been back there 4 weeks ago as the "birthday" kitchen we'd bought hadn't been complete and they were going to order the parts for me (it had been the last of it's kind in stock and they didn't know if they were going to get it again). Fast forward 4 weeks and having still heard nothing I was very sour, I rocked up there spoiling for a fight and the assistants suddenly couldn't have been more helpful (they must have an irate customer sensor). Everything was waiting including a complete set of accessories we didn't need and although they'd forgotten the tap, they'd had another delivery of the same kitchens so we got a tap out of one of the other boxes. They couldn't explain why I hadn't been contacted and told what was going on, so in apology I scored all the extra accessories (great as now I don't have to worry too much about things breaking or going missing).
The best thing about the whole experience was I never raised my voice or even really got a chance to complain, I stated my problem and the shop assistants ran about solving it for me. Perhaps german customer service isn't as bad as I've always thought!

AWOL again

Sorry we were visiting friends up North last weekend and then had a friend, Julie, come to stay this week. We're really proud of Julie as she has just completed her first Ironman triathlon!!

We also had our first play therapy appointment yesterday, it was just questions about what Enya does, doesn't do, likes and doesn't like. It will however be a weekly appointment for the next little while. I had to laugh though, as during the appointment Enya was offered a bell in a tin which she proceeded to take out, but then immediately wanted to put the lid back on the tin. Variations on this theme happened several times during the appointment and it culminated with the therapist asking me if I always get the girls to help me tidy up (mostly yes). Enya also amply displayed her most recent tricks, one good, one not so good. She is now pointing with her index finger at objects (sometimes even objects we've named for her), she has also started banging her head on walls, furniture or floors if she doesn't get her own way. This is purely attention seeking (she watches us and stops if we leave the room or turn our backs on her) and the therapist fully agreed with our chosen response saying if we react it will be positive feedback for a negative action, if you know what I mean! Ciara has also done this a few times but Enya does it constantly. We're at 6 weeks and counting for a speech therapy appointment, although I'd rather not start until after next weeks physio check up is out the way anyway.

Just to round things off it looks like both girls are coming down with something, they've been off their food for the last few days and this morning Enya was wretching before she even got breakfast. She only drank 30ml of watered down milk (I know they shouldn't get milk if they are nauseous but my girls refuse all other liquids particulaly when they are ill) and ate 5 spoons of cereal. Cosidering that her mornng bottle is her main source of liquid for the day, today is not going to be pretty!

Just as well I didn't get my hopes up too high for the week, now I've injured my back. I'm hobbling around and can't even lift the girls into/out of bed. When it rains it pours.