Hello Sock Bunny.

Lily finished making her Sock Monkey the day after she started him, not really a surprise, she isn't one to lallygag.  There is just one little thing, it isn't a monkey, it's a bunny. she made a sock BUNNY.

Here he is. I think he is very very sweet.

hello Sock Bunny

His whiskers make me smile

He even has a little bunny tail

Now he gets to join the gang

I've suggested a new and much bigger shelf but that idea is being met with resistance.
So I've suggested using 2 shelves for them.....read above regarding resistance.

she has a matching pair of orange socks.......perhaps those will push her into considering a bigger shelf.

I opened up a sweat shop

Rosie slogging away

her feet don't reach the floor so I had to improvise

Lily hard at work

Aha, i spy a sock monkey

It took all day and into the night 

Bunny helped

Rosie quit helping and watched telly.

My crafty girl decided she wanted to make a sock monkey. She knows how to sew so I let her "have at it". After watching her sew for an eternity I asked her if she would rather use the sewing machine and she declined. Little Miss Perfectionist must have had a reason so I let it go. After an another eternity, I asked again because that is how I roll. I do things quickly, very quickly and I can't imagine why anyone would do things slowly. Once I pointed out that it was really easy to use she showed some interest.

I didn't say anything I just put the machine on the table and set it up. I said you do this this and this and bam, you sew. She was amazed and sat down and s-l-o-w-l-y, oh so very painfully slowly. depressed the foot pedal. I left her to it. When I came back she was hand sewing because the machine was broken. The tension had gone awry and things got messy. I fixed it for her and off she went again, quite fast I need to add.

We went out this afternoon to see Despicable Me 2 and didn't get back until late. (fabulous movie BTW) Her sewing project was put on hold. I very very rarely have to work from the house and tonight was one of those nights so the girls made themselves invisible and quiet as church mice and as soon as my client had left I ran upstairs to see what they were doing. Lily was sewing in bed but Rosie was watching telly.

When Rosie saw Lily sewing with the machine this morning she wanted a turn so I found some old scraps of fabric and taught her how. She loved it and keeps asking if she can sew some more. I finally told she could when she decided what she was going to make.

Sock monkey isn't quite finished yet but I promise, when he is, I will post a photo.

Seeing Clearly

Having lost all of my vision in my left eye for months at a time on numerous occasions I do not take seeing clearly for granted. I started wearing glasses a year ago and noticed a couple of months ago that all was not well as I couldn't see squat.....yet again.

Lily was also squinting to see anything further than arms length all of a sudden so I made appointments for everyone to see their favourite eye man.

Rosie; to quote the DR., has dodged a bullet for another year. Her congenital birth defect has also affected her eyes so it is just a matter of time before the opaque film in her eyes makes glasses a necessity for her. He is really hoping she will make it to about 12 before this happens and perhaps it never will but he says don't hold your breath.

Lily; well if you have a read for a while you know she is as blind as a bat without glasses. Her vision has deteriorated again but not by an alarming rate. She is at an age where changes like this are normal and he isn't even the slightest bit concerned and expects it to level off a little now...gawd I hope so. Kidlet truly cannot see.

Me; something about my age was mentioned but  I am sure that was just a misunderstanding. Nothing was mentioned about mine levelling off? Must be the different end of the age spectrum. LOL.

So in the last 2 weeks I've  been handed 2 prescriptions for glasses. I chose my frames, nothing fancy and very reasonably priced and then we started with the lenses. All of a sudden I thought I was single handedly paying off the national debt. What the hell is with eye glass lenses people? Holy cow! It's not enough that I have to have glasses but I also have to have very dark sunglasses because my left pupil no longer moves very well or very fast and living here in Fl the sunlight just sears right into my brain causing a very sharp pain. So I got the pleasure of not one but 2 pairs of specs...yay me.

Moving along to yesterday. Lily is getting to big for kiddies frames so we moved to the next section. She chose her frames, a little pricey but in all fairness to her she has never even scratched her glasses let alone broken or lost a pair in 3 years.  I can only think of one occasion when she couldn't find them before school and she called me and they were in my bag, with me, at work. (ooppps) She was torn between to pairs but they were buy one get one 50% off so I told her to get both. She has to wear them ALL the time. It wasn't just the lenses but the whole dealio for that price. Of course her lenses also cost the same as it costs to feed a small country for a year because her vision sucks and her lenses are crazy but that folks is not her fault!

The doc suggested contacts for Lily but she has no interest at all yet. When she does we will attempt them. He thinks she is at an age where she can start wearing them. This kid loves her glasses though so I don't see it happening. She also pointed out to the doc that it would be a pain in the neck for swimming.....I don't know why she thinks it will be. Andie, you swim in yours don't you?

So now we are all seeing clearly and I can see very clearly why we won't be taking any extravagant vaca's this summer........

Sorry, that was just a little rant and normal programming will resume tomorrow.

This is the colour of one of Lily's choices.

Stand clear of the doors....

.....and mind the gap.

The title has nothing to do with anything other than allowing me to segway into the gap comment.

The tooth fairy will be visiting again this evening, hence the word, gap. Lily finally lost another tooth. She has lost all of her teeth in bed at night, funny girl. Since they only ever get out of bed if something is wrong I knew when I heard her coming down the stairs that she had lost a tooth. It couldn't possibly be anything else as she had only been in bed for 4 minutes. Rosie didn't like to be left out so she was in close pursuit.

Once things were calm Rosie asked Lily, how do you pull out a tooth and Lily told her you just pull. With that Ro started to yank on all her teeth. Lily then added, they have to be loose first. Ro then looked deflated and merely said, Oh. I think in her head she was adding up some serious cash. Whacko.

Mind the gap.

She wanted a photo of it...believe me, it wasn't my idea.

Pass the duct tape

Lily talks a lot. Seriously, from the minute she wakes up until the minute she goes to bed she talks. She has always been this way. I suppose there may have been a brief interlude where she wasn't capable of actually speaking but believe me it was very brief so it may just have slipped my mind.

All day long, yack, yack, yack and it really does drive you bloody mad can get under ones skin. I am so used to it that I can tune it out but every now and again the constant yipping drives even the toughest of us to distraction. Lately, and I do believe it is the excitement of the end of the school year, she has been worse than ever. Today I was driving and in the rear view mirror I saw Rosie and her mouth was opening and closing much like that of a gold fish. Finally she just blurted out, over Lily, "fine I was  was trying to say something but I won't bother because you just won't stop and I can't get a chance!" She looked so deflated.

I interrupted Lily and just told her to stop. Stop talking, I said, just stop it, you don't ever stop talking, Your poor sister never gets a chance because you gobble up all the words. She didn't seem at all offended. I don't think it means a thing to be told to stop, she must hear it all the time. I certainly wasn't trying to offend her but I am sure if someone told me to stop talking I would be shocked but not her. Her personality is loud.

The only time she is ever really really quiet is when she is reading a book or her head is in her ipod. Thank God she loves to read. She even talks whilst she swims.

Pass the duct tape, maybe that will work.

I love this out going loud girl but even when she sleep s she talks. I'll try the duct tape for sure and now that it comes in nice patterns she'll probably be OK with it.

Dryland

Two nights a week before swimming Lily has dryland training, or as we like to call it, DRYLANDIA, and we always say it in a very theatrical voice. This is what she was doing when she broke her arm. I never get to see what she does at Drylandia because I am always at the pool with Rosie and Drylandia takes places out on the track.

This evenings swim practise was cut short due to lightening somewhere in the distance but it didn't stop Coach Vladi from working them out on the track. Rosie and I went and watched.

One thing that people have always said about Lily is that she is always smiling and when I downloaded the photos I saw that smile immediately. I couldn't see it from where I was as she was a long way off and I had to zoom to find her.

A crawling relay.

little Miss Chatterbox

Laughing her head off!

I enjoyed watching her train, it was great to see her doing something other than swim. I was not happy to see her bare foot though. we had a long talk about that and I don't think it will happen again. I think I told her just about every single possible disease and ailment you can contract from being barefoot outside. Eeeewww.

From this, to this

From this,

To this.

For quite some time I have been trying to think of a way to display Lily's swimming medals and ribbons. I have searched the internet and scoured pinterest. If I liked something she didn' and vice versa. A few weeks back I saw a plain old wooden board with some hooks in it and the word, Swimming, stencilled on it. It was nice but not $40 nice. I showed it to Lily and asked her if she wanted to make one. She has badgered me since that day to buy the wood but I kept forgetting.

On Thursday we were coming home from the supermarket and we noticed the handyman working on a fence, I swung the car over and asked him for one of the nasty old fence planks. He gave it to me willingly. We came home and as I unloaded the car of groceries Lily wasted no time and grabbed her tool kit. She checked the specs of the one on the computer and decided to change them slightly and then she set to. She did the whole thing herself with only some guidance from me. I was NOT allowed to help.

Removing the nails

Measuring

cutting

sanding

painting with the base coat

Adding the words for the reversed stencil

top colour

removing the stickers

bling

hooks

even hangers on the back

ta da. 

Her grandpa taught her how to use power tools when she was over there last summer, or the one before. She is very careful and knows what she is doing. I am really impressed with what she made and now she is going to make one for Rosie too. I am a little concerned that my fence might suddenly fall down as she decides to make more and more of them!

No news is good news

Yesterday was so chaotic that when I finally stopped running around at 11.45 last night I took one look at the computer and poked my tongue out at it. I just didn't have it in me to update on Lily's appointment.

She had her MRI done at some ungodly hour and it was marked very clearly STAT so that the results would be sent to the ortho in time for her afternoon appointment but the radiologist was not in yesterday so it might just have well been marked SQUAT cos the results were not sent.

Never mind!

She saw her ortho anyway and he took yet more x-rays. The man who wouldn't even discuss waterproof casts and swimming with her on Monday, after seeing the newest x-rays, told her that barring anything funky showing up on her MRI, she can get back in the pool next week. Her bones are back together and looking good now they just need to heal. AMAZING. Even Dr M was a little surprised. We all know that kids heal fast but this is one week and the radius was in 2 pieces and now it is in one piece again. Lots of rest, a healthy diet and exercise, hmmm must be something to it.

He was given no choice than to put another enormous cast back on and await the MRI results. I can ring the office and find out the results but it won't make any difference she won't get a smaller cast until Thursday so I'll wait and if the news is bad, well I'd rather not be the one to tell her.

I had to laugh yesterday at how many 10 year old girls were in the office with broken hands, fingers, wrists and arms. And not one boy, nope, not one! Of course only one had a cast from her shoulder to her thumb all the others had dainty little things barely passing their wrists. 10 appears to be the magical age for breaking things.

Getting the cast cut off, she looks a little scared

zipped right through it

Since her whole day was comprised of running from one appointment to the next and her cast was removed at 8am and she wasn't re-cast until 2pm I chose to let her skip school. It was the last day before Easter break. We spent a really fun day together and after the MRI we went to a lovely French bakery and I let her choose herself a treat. I had to laugh at her misfortune when she tried to eat it. She had the Tiramisu in one hand, the good one, and she plucked a chocolate decoration out with the other but couldn't get it into her mouth.

All is well here.

insert evil laugh !

As with most things she has taken in all into her stride and the idea of being back in the pool next week has jostled her along. Not sure what we are going to do next week for Spring Break...no bikes, no beach, no sand in the cast.... no no that would be awful. Ummm. suggestions would be handy.

meet monkey

In my head I knew exactly how todays appointment with the ortho was going to unfold. He would take a couple of x-rays, they always like to do their own, say things were looking good, slap on a waterproof cast to below the elbow and tell us to come back in 3 weeks for a re-check. I just knew it.


I was not expecting to find out that he is 99.9% positive that she has 2 broken bones. I was not expecting to hear that the other bone is the scaphoid bone, which is the nastiest of all bones in the wrist to break albeit the most common. 3 of his 4 x-rays showed "something" on the scaphoid.

"Scaphoid fractures are known to have unpredictable healing. This is due to the unique anatomy of the scaphoid itself. The fracture often cuts off normal blood circulation to pieces of the bone. Also, one set of wrist bones (yellow) attached to one end of the bone pull in different directions than others (white) attached to the other end of the bone, pulling so strongly that it may not be possible to hold them together with any type of cast. For this reason, these fractures may heal slowly (delayed union) or not at all (nonunion)." Oh joy

I have to take her for an MRI on Thursday morning, well first we have to zoom back to the ortho's office have the cast cut off, have her arm taped, zoom over to the MRI place and get that done, then in the afternoon go back to the ortho's office to find out the results and get the appropriate cast put on. He is leaving town on Friday and doesn't want to go without finding out what's going on with Lily. At present Lily's cast is even bigger than the one she had put on in the ER as it covers her thumb now too. No school for Lily on Thursday so her Spring Break will start a day early. 

If she does have a fracture of her scaphoid she will be in this type of cast for 10 weeks but hopefully, fingers crossed, she doesn't and she will have her thumb back out and the cast will go up to her shoulder and she will wear that for 3 weeks then he will replace it with one that goes up to her elbow and is waterproof so that she can go back to swimming. 

On a very positive note, the new xrays today showed a marked improvement in the break in the radius. The bone is broken straight across, clean from one side to the other, but the difference today from Thursday is amazing. It is hard to even see a really clear break now whereas on Thusday night is was really obvious.There is still loads of swelling on the bone and it looks deformed but the actual break looks great. 

And so I introduce to you, Monkey. Child no longer has an opposable thumb, therefore she has earned the moniker, Monkey.

Monkey

Monkey gets her cast.

Happy girl monkey

 


and all the way across the pond in the UK it turns out Nannis might be joing the club of people with broken bones. She is waiting to hear if she has a broken ankle, for heavens sake. Hop on a plane Nannis, I'll take care of you I'm getting good at this cast business.

And we didn't even have to get up early.

We seem to be attending a whole lot more swim meets this year than we did last year! I swear there weren't this many 12 months ago. I realised about an hour ago that there were of course this many but Lily just wasn't good enough to participate in them. Oh how things have changed. And lest we should forget I now have 2, count them, 2, that are competing.

Todays meet was late, warm-ups started at 11.a.m..  Pretty cushy if you ask me. We rolled out of bed late and took things at a nice weekend pace which on the day of a meet is unheard of.

Lily swam in 4 events. She is getting very serious about things now as try outs for Junior Olympics are coming and she needs to make JO times and being the competitive soul that she is she is pushing pushing pushing. She didn't make any JO times today but she is getting close and he coach is telling her to be patient. Hah, good luck with that you just might want to talk to to a fork.

100 yard back                   Today     1.32.38 kidlet detests backstroke and hasn't competed before
50 yard breast                  old time      49.04             today     46.10
100 yard fly                      old time   1.40.15             today  1.35.00
50 yard free                      old time      37.65             today     36.05

All her times improved but for her they weren't good enough, insert large GROAN from me. She was really happy with her backstroke and placed 4th overall. FOURTH, that is freaking amazing.  She has only been swimming for just over a year. I just went to check the official times and they still aren't posted so I am not sure how she did overall but as far as I am concerned she is improving so what more can she ask for???? In a sport where hundredths of a second count and make the difference between first and second place and this kid is knocking 5 seconds off of her times in 6 weeks...what more can we say to her.

The crazy Fish getting prepped and Pepped

Rosie, the Mascot.

Jade and Jodi. The best part of swimming. Jade is a fabulous swimmer and watched Lily with me today and gave so much feedback to her it was great. She also pointed out things to me that I would never have noticed. Love that girl.

Concentration x 10.000

And that's how you FLY
She explained to me today that she learned a new technique last night and implemented it today and she is convinced that that is what help shave those 5 seconds off. 

She has some pretty big meets coming up and i know she is going to be pushing herself. I can downplay them until the cows come home but it's that old type A personality that kicks it up a notch.

 I'm very proud of you kidlet. Reach for the stars because nothing is to far away.

Oh and I went to my first coaches meeting today. A few months back coach Andrew asked if I would be interested in becoming an official and I agreed. After all the tests, background checks etc, I am finally done. Today was my first meet in this new position and when the officials called for a rep from all the teams he sent me. GAH! I'm going to be stuck at the pool for a while by the looks of things so I might as well do something useful while I am there.

Itchy Lily

One day last week while Lily was feeling particularly horrid I stopped at my friend Jakies house on the way to taking Lilipop to the Pediatrician. Lily has been there countless times but this time something was different for her. Jakie's cat Honey, in a ridiculously short amount of time, made Lily break out in hives. (My family and Jakie's pets = not good LOL)

We de-haired her clothes, wiped down her skin and headed off to her ped appointment. What is the first thing the nurse notices? The hives. In all fairness they were kind of hard to miss they were even on her face. After seeing Barbara about Lily being sick we discussed Lily's reaction and I agreed it was time to get her allergy tested.

Yesterday was the day. Since the kid hasn't been through enough lately we just decided to throw this at her too. Sometimes you just get really lucky when you pick a doctor at random and yesterday was one of those days. This doctor was fabulous and had a great sense of humour. One thing that he had in common with Lily's pediatrician was a common belief that it was not the cat that made Lily break out in hives but more likely something that she ate that morning. I stood firm in my belief that it was Honey.

In came the nurse with her tray of 32 nasty little scratchers to poke Lily with and we were off. She marked up Lil's arm and the first scratch was histamine and within seconds she responded.
She then continued down all 4 columns until she was done. The far right as you look at the photos are food and cat and dogs. We were watching these really closely.

Immediate reaction to histamine. Everyone has that.

As each minute passed she started to react to 4 things and get itchier and itchier but she could not scratch so behind closed doors she turned into a ninja and had herself and her mother in fits of giggles.

Nothing happening here

Something going on here but we don't know what it is.

Aha, see the bump on her arm that is tucked under that's CAT! 

After her 20 minutes was up the doctor came back in (he back in before that to just to check on her) and he looked at her rolled his eyes and sighed. She is allergic to cats and quite highly allergic to cats! He doesn't get it. She is also allergic to grass but only the kinds of grass that we have down here in Florida, the kinds that pollinate 10 months out of the year. He doesn't get it because most kids with these types of allergies display different symptoms: runny noses, bronchial infections, itchy eyes, asthma, what you consider typical allergy suffering symptoms but not her she goes straight to hives and displays nothing else. Plus, this is sudden onset!

I told him, this is typical of my kid, she doesn't like to be ordinary. He laughed. She made him laugh a lot. He said if and when she breaks out in hives, cos she will because, lets face it, you can't avoid grass it's around, she should just take anti histamines. It isn't a "bad" allergy. We know this.

Her ant allergy, now this is a bad one and is life threatening. I don't know if he was trying to scare me or not. If he was it didn't work but he says it can kill her. Yes, I know this. He wants the shot therapy for her. All doctors do. We researched it, thoroughly and I don't. Her reaction to ant venom is very high it measures a 5 on a 1-5 scale. She is aware of this and is careful. We don't go anywhere without her epi-pen and she has only had a problem once. ONCE. She might never have an encounter again.

So weird kid of mine has developed more allergies. The cat one blew me away cos this summer when we went to GA jacob took them to see his aunt who is cat lady and has 20 cats and she didn't even scratch let alone break out in hives.
What gives kiddo?

Eating my words

Not 2 hours after Lily went to bed last night she woke up writhing in pain. I put a call into her pediatrician and was told to take her to the ER not the clinic, immediately. The child that is terrified of needles looked like this within minutes of arriving there.

When you hurt so much you really don't care, thank goodness. Thankfully they gave her something for pain early on and something to stop the vomiting so she was able to lay still for the remainder of the night.
Test after test after test. I have seen most of her insides on ultrasounds and they look normal.

Verdict. One bad arse virus.

Heavy meds to keep her pain free and nausea free.

No school or any activities. Duh!

2 kids and one adult with no sleep = Mama in warrior mode.

Feel better sweet girl.

The Day that changed my life forever

Nine years ago today in Hubei Province, China, a scared yet incredibly strong 14 month old child was handed to me. She was to become my daughter forever. She had endured so much in her short life, more than any one person ever should yet she had and still has a sparkle to her, a light that no amount of pain could ever extinguish.

She is my heart, she became the part of me that made me whole.

When I met this little soul I knew the true meaning of love and the true meaning of destiny for the first time. Words that once held a shallow meaning suddenly held depth. Everything in my life was now the right way up and my life held a new meaning. I was a person that was driven.

I thought I had my life before her but I was wrong. I knew something was missing but I had no idea that everything was missing. I knew that I wanted her but I didn't realise how much I needed her. Until I held her, felt her, smelled her, I couldn't allow myself to know just how much I needed her. It hurt too much.

This child, my child, my daughter, isn't one that I take for granted. I still smile when I see her, I still look at her as if it is the first time because to me it is the first time. To me it is a miracle that she is mine.

Lily, you rock my world, you make me laugh, cry, giggle, mad, crazy, frustrated, proud, happy, and you make me do it all with more passion than I have ever done it before.

Lilipop, my world is a much more colourful one with you in it. Thank you for being my girl.

I will love you forever,

Mummy.