Good Friday 2011

This morning we headed out to Mum and Dad's for Good Friday brunch with the family.  It's become a bit of a tradition over the last few years, and the boys always look forward to it, especially the Easter egg hunt with their cousins.   The amount of cousins seems to be growing so fast with Jack and Hugh both joining the family since last Easter.  We were excited to hear that Hugh now has a middle name - Christian! I think Uncle Chrish is pretty stoked about it :)

Jack looks so big now that Hugh has joined us.  He's such a cutie.

Noah wasn't having a happy day today, so wanted lots of cuddles with Aaron. 

It's nice to be able to use Mum and Dad's new kitchen now that it is finally finished.

Brunch was a major feast with all sorts of yummy things - pancakes, homemade potato pancakes (mum's specialty from when we were kids that Eden and Jared loved reminiscing about), mushrooms, tomatoes, eggs, egg and bacon muffins, hot cross bun french toasts, croissants, juice and scrolls.

Aaron hid the eggs this year, and Kobe couldn't get out fast enough to find the eggs and actually came inside with a few while Aaron was still hiding them! 

I was laughing at Chloe and Lachie's baskets.  Steph made Chloe's beautiful basket a couple of years ago and has the whole works - felt, buttons etc.  This morning they realised that Lachie didn't have a basket so the improvised and whipped up a basket from an old party hat - quite inventive really!   Lachie loved it, but we kept joking about who the favourite child is, and how things change with the second, third and fourth child ;)

He was much better off than my poor boys though, as we totally forgot to bring any baskets, but luckily Grandma always has a good supply for the kids to use.

Kobe was looking everywhere for the eggs, including up on the clothesline!

Once all the eggs had been found, we divide them all up to make it fair.  Last year there were tears as we put all the eggs together, but this year everyone was quite happy to share their eggs.

Grandma and Grandpa always give each of the grandkids an Easter present.  Kelsea is the crazy one in the family who doesn't like milk chocolate and only likes white! She was very happy with her white bunny.

The three girls loved their ears and looked so cute all dressed up in them. 

They loved having Grandma read them an Easter story before they went home.

 

Before we left I gave Linc his first ever hair cut which was a bit nerve wracking! He did a good job and was distracted with ABC kids on the TV.  I'm sure it's a huge mess and not even at all, but at least it's a bit shorter.

Jay spent most of the morning out on the four wheeler.  He loves going out to Mum and Dad's and it's nice that he has something fun to do, while the little kids play together.

It was a lovely morning and we missed Chrish as it was way too expensive for him to fly down for the weekend, but we were happy to hear that he decided to brave a ten hour drive up to the Gold Coast to stay with some good friends instead.

Thursday Night Footy

Friday night footy has turned into Thursday night footy this week, with a game being played on Thursday, rather than Good Friday.  Harri's loves Fridays, as he knows he gets to stay up late to watch two quarters of footy with Aaron.  This morning before school he was raving on to me about how he gets to stay up late and have 'chips and fizz' with Dad, while they watched footy together.

Noah came home from school with the usual Easter treats he had made with Di - chocolates, an easter basket and a chicken.  Harri also came home with some eggs to share and a card for the family, but he had also made Aaron an extra card which made me smile.  He obviously thinks more about Buddy than the guy at Aurora did last weekend :(

5 Days Later ...

Noah is feeling much better after his bisphosphonate therapy.  Today he actually went to school for half a day and looks so much better within himself.  Most of the fluid has now gone and his temp is back to normal, and he's much more awake and alert.

It's nice to have the 'old Noah' back with us again :)

My Assistant

Some days are so beautiful that I would much rather hang out with Kobe at the park, than spend the day at home doing house work.  Last week was one of those days, and I wanted to go up to the Punchbowl Reserve anyway to have a look around for my photo shoot the next day. 

Kobe was so happy to be going to the park, and I was so happy to be out in the sun taking photos :) Some days Kobe is the perfect little model - posing away and doing just what you ask him to do. Other days he has an attitude and refuses to do anything at all except sit and sulk.  This was one of those days.  He kept looking at me with my camera saying 'no Mummy!' and would turn away every time he would see me pointing it at him.  After a while he forgot about the camera and actually just enjoyed being outside.

I thought it would be fun to get my remote out and have a play and Kobe thought so too!

He cracked me up as he would sit posing away for the camera, clicking the remote at the same time.  I think he should be my assistant at my next photo shoot. I may even just give him the remote and let him go for it!

I've been thinking about Facebook a lot lately and have decided that I'm wanting to keep my personal Facebook page just as that - more personal.  Unfortunately I have a lot of photos of other people that I have taken on my Facebook page, and this often means that I get friend requests from people that I don't really know or talk to.   Because of this I'm going to be deleting all my photos from Facebook that I have taken for other people, but I have moved them over to a new page that is just for my photos - Lisa King Photography.  Check it out.

Bisphosphonate Therapy

We were so excited when Noah got his cast off after having his fractured leg, but unfortunately we were a little over excited, as an x-ray showed that his fracture actually hadn't healed properly yet, despite being in a cast for over two months.

Every 6 months or so we see a specialist who deals mostly with children with Cerebral Palsy.  When I showed him the x-ray he pretty much freaked out (and freaked me out!) saying that his leg still hadn't healed and that he shouldn't be swimming at school because his bones are so fragile (he could tell just by looking at the x-ray and seeing how thin they were) that he could get a broken bone, just by being handled in the pool.  Noah's physio and OT were with me at the appointment and they both told me to come back in the next day and they would make Noah a backslab for his leg. It was a pain to have it on again, but it was much better than a full cast as we could take it off to shower him.

We have been discussing whether Noah needs bisphosphonate therapy with his paediatrician, but the doctor also said that there was no need to wait another 6 months to have another bone density scan done, as just having three fractures and seeing how thin his bones are on an x-ray is enough evidence to have it done.  Bisphosphonate therapy increases the bone density and to have it you need a lot of evidence to justify it.  I'm not sure whether it's because of the cost of the drug, or because of the side effects of it, but I'm thinking it must be both.  The pharmacist at the hospital gave me some information about the medication and in the USA the cost was over $1000! It's no wonder the government want a lot of evidence to show that you really need it. Noah couldn't have it until the statewide medical council had actually met and approved it for him.

With the pharmacist I pretty much had to sign my life away.  Noah couldn't have it unless I signed a piece of paper to say that I understood that there may be long term side effects and it hadn't been tested in children yet.  It's always scary having to make big decisions and not knowing the consequences of it, but I just knew that Noah couldn't keep going on getting fractures, so felt like we really had no other option. I told the pharmacist that unfortunately for us we don't really need to look very long term as Noah has already exceeded his life expectancy. 

On Friday we headed into hospital to have the IV infusion done. I was expecting that it had to run over a few hours, as I was told that it was a half day admission, but the half day was spent just waiting for things to happen, which is always the way when you are in a busy hospital. 

We were lucky to have one of our favourite nurses looking after Noah for the morning, and we had lots of visits from all the nurses who knew us so the time went very quickly. Once the doctor finally got the canula in (Noah is very hard to get a vein from), we only had to wait for another 20 minutes while it ran through. 

We were sharing a room with three other people, and we were very glad we didn't have to spend the whole night in there with them - or one in particular.  We are usually very lucky and get a single room, but there was no need this time when we were only in for a few hours.

I don't really know much about the medication, but we were told that Noah 'may' experience a few side effects including having cold/flu like symptoms, swelling, puffiness, fever, and vomiting etc.   Noah is on so many medications that I have stopped looking at the side effect list that comes with them, as it just worries me too much, and I didn't really expect that he would actually get any short term side effects from it.

When his treatment was finally over, we were excited to go and visit Simone and her little man 

who finally has a gorgeous name - Flynn Charlie Stephen. 

At 4am the next morning, Noah woke up with a high temp, wanting to vomit and having lots of seizures.  The next morning his face was also very puffy and also his eyes.  We dosed him up with panadol for the day, but the following day things were the same, so while visiting Simone (again! I'm sure she's sick of me!) I thought I'd pop into the kids ward to see what they thought. They asked me to bring Noah up as they really wanted to check him out, so I headed back up to the kids ward with him.  They didn't seem too worried about him but gave him another med to try to get rid of some of the fluid, but he is still the same today. 

It's awful seeing him feel so unwell, especially when he was feeling really well before the treatment.  Hopefully it will only be another day or so and he will be feeling okay again. Fingers crossed that the side effects will all be worth it, to have strong bones again.

Battle of the Birds

Yesterday was the perfect autumn day for a game of footy. 


Di came and looked after Noah for us so we could all go to the game at Aurora Stadium - Hawks V Eagles.  We went along armed with jumpers, blankets and even hot chocolate made in the thermomix, expecting it to be a typical Tasmanian day - warm one minute...freezing the next, but the weather was perfect the whole game.

We have seats again this year with our Hawthorn memberships, and this year Mum and Nicki and Alex have all moved over from their posh seats to sit with the more vocal fans.



Kobe was excited to go to the footy and he was great last time, but this time he was a total pain.  After ten minutes he was over it and started moaning and saying he wanted 'hot chips'.  He kept complaining the whole time and when I said 'right! that's it! do you want to go home!?' (thinking it was a threat for him to sit down and behave) and he says 'yes please Mummy!'.  Little rat bag!

After a while he was distracted by Jalen and junk food.

 He obviously couldn't get the hot chips in quick enough!


Harri on the otherhand was totally engrossed in the game and filled out his footy record at the same time.

It was nice having Nicki and Alex and the kids close by as we got to see them lots, and Linc came and sat with us for a quarter.

We were thinking that Hawthorn would take it out fairly easily, but it was a very close and Hawthorn only just won by 7 points in the end.

Aaron was singing the theme song loud and proud before we left.