High School Musical

Last night Aaron and I took Jay to see the Launceston College's production of High School Musical. Every Friday night we have a tradition where we let Jalen stay up late and we watch a DVD together. Last year we watched High School Musical and Jay loved it! He then had to get the CD and often played it in his bedroom at night in bed.

When I saw that LC was putting it on I knew that Jay would love to go for it so we booked in Di (one of Noah's carer's) to do her In Home Support hours late one night so we could go. Harri also stayed home with her - lucky for Di he was already asleep when she arrived last night!

I wasn't sure how Jay would respond to it but he was so funny! He was singing REALLY loud all the way through it and cracking up laughing at all the jokes. It was a lot of fun and nice to go out - just the three of us.

The Big 30!

Happy Birthday Chrish! Christian is the big 3-0 today! Wish we were there to celebrate with you. Hope you have had a great day. We miss you!

Bubbles

The boys are having LOTS of fun playing with Noah's new bubble blower that he got for his birthday from Di. Isn't it great that something that costs so little makes kids so happy!

Harri is miserable

Poor Harri. He is usually lots of fun and happy most of the time, but today he was miserable! He has had a cold all week, but it has gotten worse as the week has gone on. Today after we dropped the boys off at school he asked me where we were going (he usually LOVES to go out and hates being home and always asks what we are going to do for the day) and I told him we were going to go to the gym and he started crying and said 'No Mummy, stay home'!

He was so miserable that I said okay and we came home instead. I haven't been to the gym for a week now!!! I'm having major withdrawals!

Harri watched The Wiggles for an hour or so and we then had to leave to go to our first appointment for the day - a meeting to discuss Noah's IEP. We had three appointments in total plus had to help with the school lunches, and we also had to take my Mum and Dad to the airport. It wasn't a good day for Harri to be sick.

Our last appointment was with Dr Bailey - Noah's paediatrician. We hadn't seen him for a couple of months so thought we had better have a catch up. We were talking about how Noah hadn't been in hospital for a couple of years except to have his tonsils and adenoids out and I said it was 'a miracle' and he goes 'no it's not - it is because of the great care that you give him'. That made my day!

Harri has gone to bed with the vaporiser on and I wish I was in Mum and Dad's suitcases on my way to Queensland!

Noah's 6th Birthday!

Noah has had a great birthday. This morning he woke up at about 7am with a big smile so we woke up Jay so we could open up the presents before Aaron went to work. He usually leaves at 7.30 am as he walks to work but this morning he got a lift with a friend so he got to leave a bit later.

Noah's carer Bridget was here this morning to help get Noah ready for school and she had made a beautiful blanket for him - Hawthorn colours on one side (the boys LOVED it) and rainbow colours on the other.

Noah was very happy while Harri and Jay helped to open his presents and then half way through unwrapping them he decided he had been awake long enough (probably 10 mins!) and feel back to sleep!! We just laughed as the same thing happens every year.


He got a TJ bearytales bear - it is really cute. It tells stories and his eyes, mouth, ears and arms all move while he is telling the story. He also got extra story cartridges to go with it and a Hawthorn bear that sings the theme song.

Tuesday is Noah's day to go to Newstead Height so he was lucky as he got to go for a swim on his birthday. Harri and I decided to stay to watch, before we had to go to a seminar on Cortical Vision Impairment. Harri wasn't too enthused about the seminar, until they showed a video on CVI in which Noah featured a lot. There were a lot of photos of Noah with Harri and Jay and Harri just kept yelling out - 'Look -there's Harri!' and cracked everyone up.

Noah took his TJ bear to school and all the kids listened to it telling stories. They all loved it.

When we came home Nanna and Pa (Aaron's step Mum and Dad) and Nan and Pop (Aaron's grandparents) were here for afternoon tea. We are all stuffed full with mudcake now! It was great to see Aaron's Nan and Pop. We hadn't seen them for a long time.

Six years old tomorrow

It is hard to describe how I feel on each of Noah's birthdays. When he was diagnosed with hydranencephaly at 9 weeks old we were told that he would possibly live for 2-4 years. I always had that in the back of my mind and never imagined that he would be going to school full time and turning 6! I am always really happy that he has reached another year, but also feel emotional on his birthday because I know that is one less that we will celebrate with him.

Silly I know - we should just be happy. Of course we are happy - I think that in the back of your mind you are just wondering how many more we will get to celebrate together.

Noah is actually healthier now than he has ever been in his whole life. The first two years were very hard on him but he has now not been in hospital for over two years - except for when he was doing the ketogenic diet and had his tonsils and adenoids removed last year, but we don't count those as a hospital trips - he wasn't really sick then.

I just got off the phone after talking to Kleif from Germany. At first I thought it was one of those painful telemarketers and was ready to say 'no thanks' and to hang up, but then realised who it was! Kleif has a daughter Johanna who also had hydranencephaly and who turned 6 today. We weren't sure last year whether Johanna would be around to celebrate this birthday, so I know that he knows exactly how I feel. It is so nice to 'know' so many people from all around the world who have children just like Noah. They they don't feel sorry for us but know that how lucky we are to be blessed with a child like Noah.

Chloe

How cute is my niece Chloe!? I have three nieces - all of them are cute but we have only met Chloe once. Two of them live in Tasmania - Maddi and Kelsea, and Chloe lives in Sydney (for now!).

Chloe is Eden and Steph's daughter, and we have only met her once in January. I have been bugging them to send a recent photo of her and we were emailed some last week. She has grown up so fast! I wouldn't have even recognised her. She obviously takes after her Mum :o)

Birthday Party

Today we celebrated Dad and Noah's birthday early. Their birthday is really next Tuesday - yes, they do have the same birthday! Dad will be 55 and Noah will be 6. We weren't really sure what we were going to do as we really wanted to go swimming as it is something Noah really enjoys, but we couldn't find a pool that is warm enough for him. Lucky for us it was a beautiful sunny winters day - warm enough at least to go outside for a couple of hours (once the frost defrosted!)

We went to Punchbowl park for a BBQ lunch and enjoyed the sun. Harri and Jay had a great time feeding the ducks bread, kicking the soccer ball around with Grandma and Grandpa and Uncle Jared, and playing on the equipment.


Noah was really happy to be outside and was smiling a lot which was nice. He was also awake all day which is always a bonus! Lately he has been really well and awake for most of the day.

I was VERY excited as I had just bought a new digital camera this morning. I have no idea how to use it yet, but had a lot of fun running around snapping photos all day. Dad kept saying I was the 'pat-er-art-si' - he had no idea how to say paparazzi, and he kept asking me if I had watched the documentary of Harry and William - Princess Diana's sons. Hopefully he wasn't comparing me to the paparazzi involved with that!


Jalen was very excited as he scored our old digital camera so he also went around snapping photos all day. On the way home we had to stop across the road from his school so he could take a photo of his school sign! The things that excite us!



Once it started to get cold at the park we came home and we had to have at least have one party game before we had dessert. We played good old pass the parcel. Throughout the game Jalen kept hinting that he had never won pass the parcel before and we laughed as we knew he was hoping that Aaron would rig it so he could win. Harrison had a great time, until he realised that he couldn't unwrap the parcel each time but had to wait to see if the music stopped on him!
Unfortunately Noah did not win (he likes to share edible things with his Mum and Dad - he is such a good boy!), but Jalen did! He was pumped. Aaron swears that he didn't rig it, but maybe deep down he was hoping that Jalen would share the chocolate that he won.


For dessert Aaron made some cute little cupcakes (thanks Toni for the idea!) and we had yummy cheesecake and cakes from The Cheesecake Shop as well as chocolate ripple cake (yum!). I think we will be eating them for the next week and I will be going to the gym for a couple of extra sessions!

It was great to have everyone together again. We miss Jared and Becky now that they are back down South and don't see Alex and Nicki enough either - even though they aren't as far away now. We need to get together more often.

The noise level is definately getting a lot louder now that there are a lot more grandkids in the family. We missed Chrish, Eden, Steph and Chloe, although I can pretty much safely say that they would not have missed Alex's singing on Singstar!! It sounded like someone dying. Lucky for him he wasn't being serious or we would have been very worried.

Good friends, good food!

Today Harri and I went out for lunch with Bec and Pip. Bec, Pip and I go out regularly for tea - Aaron thinks it is every second week, but it is more like once a month or so. We grew up together -we still remember the car trips to kinder together and all the fun things we got up to as kids!

Our favourite places to go out for tea are definately Thai or Mexican but sometimes we get a bit more adventurous and try something different, but we always end up going back to the old favourites. Since Pip has decided that she is too busy with her new baby to come out for tea we had had to put our tea dates on hold for a little while :o) We thought it was time to catch up again so we drove out to Pip's today and went to the Christmas Hills Raspberry Farm for lunch. Lucky Bec has every Friday off this year or we wouldn't be able to catch up as often.


We had a great time - lots of yummy food - especially the desserts. It was the first time we had kids with us but Oliver was very well behaved. Harri coloured in for about a minute and then enjoyed just watching everything going on.


Harri was very disappointed that they didn't have any hot chips! I think that the home made raspberry icecream made up for it though!

Jitterbugs

That is the name of Jalen's basketball team! Jay loves the name - everytime we go to basketball he starts singing the song 'Wake me up before you go go' - as the first line in the song says 'jitterbug'. Although he wasn't around in the awesome 80's he knows the song from Singstar on the Playstation 2.


He plays at the YMCA. They play for an hour each week - the first half an hour is training with two teams together - they play fun games and do drills to (hopefully) improve their basketball skills and the second half an hour is a game. The ages range from 4-8 year olds so you can imagine the difference in the skills level! It is quite a laugh. The people who train the kids and umpire the games are great - they try to make it fair for everyone and let them get away with a lot - let's just say there is a lot of travelling that doesn't always get pulled up! It is all about learning and having fun. They don't even keep score, but Jalen always manages to tell us the score at the end of the game - especially if they win!


Jay loves it - on his team is Sophie who is in his class at school and also Henry Rowlings - his second cousin. He started to play at the end of last year and has improved a lot this year. Tonight he got his highest score ever - 4 goals so he was very proud of himself! He obviously takes after his Mum and not his Dad when it comes to basketball skills!!! ha ha When I was young I remember my Mum and Dad offering me $1 for every goal I got (I mustn't have been very good back then, as they must have know their money was pretty safe!). I thought about doing that earlier in the year for Jay, but I'm glad I didn't now that he is improving!

Hard to believe...

Yesterday I spent some time with Pip and her 7 week old baby - Oliver. It is still hard to believe that he is actually here! It took 4 years for Pip to get pregnant so having him here is amazing. We were both saying yesterday that it just doesn't seem real. I bet it does at 2am though! Pip is a great Mum - very relaxed. I'm glad it is not me - newborns are very hard work!

Freezing

This is the view from our backyard this morning! It has been so cold the last week or so. On the way to the gym this morning at 9am the guy on the radio said it was still -1!

I HATE winter - especially with the wheelchair. If it is raining it is awful trying to keep Noah dry while I run him out to the car. He usually stays dry, but I am always drenched and freezing for the next few hours.

Aaron always used to say that he loved winter - he loved snuggling down in a warm bed and sitting in front of the heater and just watching TV while sitting under a blanket etc. He has now changed his mind and isn't so keen on winter! We didn't have a great night last night. Noah came into our bed about 11.30 pm - not sure what was wrong but he was very upset. He fell asleep on my arm for about 20 minutes and I had to move it as it was going to sleep and I couldn't sleep because of the throbbing! A 6 year old on your arm all night isn't very comfortable. Once I moved my arm I then couldn't sleep because Noah was on my side of the bed and I couldn't get comfortable. I decided to go on the mattress on the floor and leave Noah in bed with Aaron.

5 minutes later Noah is awake and crying again and Aaron is snoring right next to him, with no clue what is going on! I get back into bed sighing really loudly to make sure Aaron wakes up and hears what is going on and he goes 'sorry', as he realised that I was back in bed trying to settle Noah again and I said 'don't be sorry -just settle Noah or get on the floor'! He decided to take the easier option and sleep on the floor.

Noah and I had a very restless night - he kept waking up every couple of hours and crying. We had the heater up full bore all night in our room but I ended up having to turn up the electric blankets too. Aaron tells me he was very warm and slept very heavily on the mattress on the floor! Lucky for him as he won't get to sleep there tonight if Noah comes into our bed- it will be my turn!! :o)

Lucky Noah woke up with a smile and had a good day at school. Hopefully tonight will be better and Noah will last all night in his own bed. It's going to be another cold one.

Lucky he is cute.....

It is lucky that Harri is cute as somedays he makes you want to tear your hair out! Jalen was so placid as a toddler and is still a very good boy. Noah of course is an angel (as he takes after me) and Harri is good really, but he likes to test you as much as possible! People used to tell me before I had kids that each child is different and it is SO true with out three boys.

Today Harri said 'I want pineapple juice' and I said 'I didn't hear any manners Harri' so he yells 'I want pineapple juice - please, RIGHT NOW!'.

If I am talking to someone else and he interupts I will say 'Harri, just wait - I'm talking to so and so' and he will yell 'I'm talking to YOU Mum!'. He makes me laugh - which isn't good when you are trying to be a serious Mum trying to teach your child some discipline!

Holidays are over

Today is the first day back to school after two weeks off. Usually I look forward to school going back - I look forward to having a quiet house during the day and to get back into a routine, but not this time. We had a really fun two weeks. Even though it has been winter we have had some nice sunny days where we could all go out and do things together.

We are lucky to be able to participate in a school holiday program run by Family Based Care. It is a government funded program for children with a disability and their families. You can nominate which activities you would like to take part in and the whole family gets to go along together. They have workers there who help you if needed. Sometimes it can be hard to go out and do things together as one of us is often with Noah and then the other is with the Jalen and Harri, but just having an extra pair of hands with us is great as we can spend more time just having fun rather than worrying about how we are going to be able to do things together or how we are going to get Noah out of the pool and changed and also watch the other boys etc.

We have had a lot of fun together but last night Aaron said he was tired and needed a holiday! Last night (last night of school holidays) Noah wouldn't settle to sleep and ended up sleeping in our bed with me at about 11.30pm. Aaron slept on the floor on a mattress and at 2am Harri started to call out - not something he usually does. He obviously wasn't feeling well and at 3.20am - after going into his room about 10 times I gave up and we brought him into our room. He slept on the mattress with Aaron and when the alarm went off at 6.20am I remembered why I love school holidays so much and wondered why I ever looked forward to school going back!

'Happy Birthday Mummy!'

That is what I have been hearing for the past two days!! Today is my 33rd birthday (yes - I AM getting old!) but since yesterday Harri has been coming up and saying 'Happy Birthday Mummy'!

While I was out yesterday Aaron made my birthday cake, and Harri helped him decorate it (and ate a lot of M&Ms in the meantime). When I got home Harri came running up to me and gave me a big cuddle saying 'Happy Birthday Mummy!' I laughed and told him my birthday was tomorrow but to a two year old that doesn't really make much sense - especially when you are making the birthday cake now.


Later in the night Aaron and Jalen were wrapping up my presents and Harri came out and told me that they had presents. I asked him where they were and he took me straight to the hiding spot under the bed and said 'ta da'!

This morning I was in the shower and Harri woke up in the meantime and came running in and straight away he said 'say Happy Birthday Mummy?', like 'is it time to say it now?' and I said yes and he was very excited. Then all morning he kept on singing Happy Birthday to me.

I had a lovely day and I'm sure Harri told me 'Happy Birthday' at least 50 times. Aaron made me lovely roast chicken and baked vegies for tea (my favourite) and then we finally got to eat the cake that Harri had been asking for all day long.


Harri quickly came up with his empty bowl and messy face and said 'more cake please!'. It is fun sharing your birthday with little kids - if you aren't excited that it is your birthday, they definately make up for it with their excitement.



Now where is that anti-wrinkle cream...........

Harri's Suit

A couple of weeks ago I remembered an old suit that Jalen had worn in Jared (my brother) and Becky's wedding as their page boy. I went searching and found it was in Harrison's cupboard all along! Lucky I remembered it when I did as it fits Harri perfectly at the moment. For some reason Harri hates to wear jumpers. No matter how cold it is outside (which is very cold at the moment in Tassie), he always says 'jumper off Mum, I'm hot'! If he knows he has to get dressed he always says to me 'no jumper Mum' even before I get one out of the cupboard.


When I found the suit I thought that the would be no way that he would keep on the suit jacket but he LOVES it!! He wore it to church a couple of weeks ago and everyone kept telling him how good he looked. This morning Aaron put on the pants and shirt for him and then he came running to me with the jacket as he wanted to put that on too. As soon as he had it all on he goes 'take a photo Mum'! He obviously knows he looks cute. When I took the photo he kept doing different poses - he definately isn't shy!

Finally!

Jalen is FINALLY off his training wheels!!! For about 3 or 4 years now we have been trying to get Jalen to ride his bike without his training wheels. Jalen doesn't have very good motor skills and not a lot of confidence when it comes to physical things. Whenever we would see a little kid riding without their training wheels we would point it out to him and tell him that if they could do it, then he could too.

Last Summer we started to prepare him by putting one wheel up a little higher so the bike was off balance - I think that actually made it worse as he would panic everytime he would go over a bump or down a hill - or even straight on flat ground for that matteras the bike would go off balance. I kept telling him that it would actually be easier to ride his bike without the training wheels as he could go faster and get his balance better. He didn't believe me though!

On the first day of these latest school holidays I just said to Jalen that we were going to go for a bike ride and he was going to get off his training wheels THESE school holidays - it was driving me crazy. We went for a little ride around the streets near our house and he did okay so I said that we would go home and take the training wheels off and try to just ride in the back yard a bit. He said that he would give it a go.

For a few months he has wanted a book called 'Pirateology', so I promised him that once he was off his training wheels we would buy the book. That was all the motivation he needed!

The backyard wasn't so great - it wasn't long enough for him to get enough speed and balance and the long grass didn't help the situation. We decided to go up to the park near our house which has a nice big grass area that was downhill. I was hoping that it would keep him moving enough to get his balance. The first go down the hill he was a champion!!! He went the whole way down but at the end he didn't really know how to stop without falling off, but he was just excited that he rode without the training wheels. We got him to ride down the hill over and over again for about 45 minutes. At the end of it he was very excited and Aaron took him into town straight away so he could buy the book.


The next day we went down to the Seaport which has great tracks to ride on. First of all he tried the flat grassed area but the grass kept slowing him down, so I told him to just go straight onto the concrete paths. Once he was on there he didn't stop!!!


We have since been riding almost every single day during the holidays and for the first time ever Jalen is actually asking us to go bike riding! He no longer falls off to stop! I thought he would be 20 and still on his training wheels!


I keep telling him how proud I am of him and he says 'thanks Mum, I am proud of myself'! He LOVES his new book!

Memories

We recently found out that my Nan (Dad's Mum) has cancer. She is 84. I had a dream during the week that made me want to go out there and go through all of her old photos with her. When I woke up from the dream I was worried that one day that both my grandparents won't be around and a lot of the information and memories that they have will be lost unless I ask them about it now. I know that some of my cousins and Aunts and Uncles have spent time with them doing this before but it is not the same as doing it for yourself.

We went out there and saw my Pop first who was in hospital. He had a few falls last week and hasn't been very well in the past year. When we walked in we weren't sure how he would be or if he would even know who we were as he often has periods from time to time where he doesn't really know about much of what is going on. It was wonderful though as he was looking quite good and was chatty and knew who we all were. I wheeled Noah up next to him and he started talking to him about 'building the boat' together (Noah's Ark) which made us all laugh.


We then went for a tour of my old schools. Deloraine is only about 40 minutes from Launceston (where we live) but I have never really taken my boys or Aaron to the schools that I used to go to. We went to the High School first which actually hadn't changed very much from when I was there over 17 years ago! It looks very run down.

We then went over to the Primary School which was a lot nicer and a lot different to when I was there. Jalen and Harrison had a great time playing on all the equipment and we just had to get a photo in front of the sign out the front! Jalen kept on laughing saying he didn't want to stand there - he cracks me up with how much he has grown up lately. Last year he wouldn't have cared!



We then went to see Nan. When we got there she had all the photo albums out on the table ready for us. Aunty Deidre had put together a beautiful scrapbook for her 80th birthday so she had saved me a lot of time as she already had a lot of people's names written next to photos. It was so fun to go throuh it with Nan and to hear all of her great stories - especially of how she met Pop and about all of her boyfriends!

Nan is famous for her beautiful sponge cakes that she makes and she had made one for us for afternoon tea but didn't have time to put cream on it, so we were lucky and got to bring it home! I kept telling Aaron and the boys that Nan makes the best sponge cakes and they agreed with me the next day when we had it after tea!

I now have all of Nan's photo albums here at home and am in the process of scanning ALL of her photos. I am wanting to do it so that everyone in the family has a copy of all of their photos. I also love to make DVD montages of songs and photos together and want to make one of Nan and Pop's lives. I am excited to finish scanning so I can start working on this. So far I have only done about a quarter of the photos in just the scrapbook and it has taken me about 10 hours already! It will be worth it though.

We had such a great day visiting Nan and Pop and reminiscing about the old days. The boys also loved spending some time with them.

Giving it a go!

My cousin has been onto me for a little while to have my own blog. I have been meaning to do this for a while. I know it will be a great way to keep a 'journal' of what my family is up to. I feel like I have nothing really exciting to share with the world, as I am a stay at home Mum who doesn't really do anything exciting, but I love to read other people's blogs - even if they are 'only' stay at home Mum's too so hopefully it may be interesting to someone out there!

Anyway - hopefully I can work out how to use it and start to keep track of what our little family is up to. I don't have time to keep a journal or even scrapbook at the moment for that matter, so this is the next best thing!

I tell people that although I am a stay at home Mum I'm not really at home very often - not lately anyway. I LOVE being at home and will dread the time when I have to go back into paid work. Being a stay at home Mum is definately work - you just don't get paid for it.

We have three boys - Jalen will be 8 in September, Noah will be six in two weeks and Harrison will be 3 in September. Aaron and I have been married for almost 12 years - 12 years!!! Wow - I sound old! Here is a photo of our little family.