Fab Feb 2009: when they're good they are very very good, when they're bad they're todzillas...

[dinkystinky]

New thread for us to chat about our little jekyll & hydes...

Danny is currently stood next to me rearranging my DVD collection - I will be doing a work out to charlie & lola tonight apparently, while DS1 will be watching Billy Blanks Taebo with his pre-bedtime cup of milk and DH's history docu is hiding out with Diego in the city of lost toys...

mslucy i'm so sorry

bumps That is awful. I suppose this is the kind of stuff you have to distance yourself from emotionally It'll be tough

hello there.
thanks for all your lovely messages.
today has been a bit weird but had work to do which was useful and now a bit drunk
in a good way.

Glad to see you back on the board MsLucy.

Bumps - also glad to hear you're enjoying your job so much. You're clearly a great carer. I'm saddened, though not particularly shocked, to hear about some of your co-carers approaches though as often people dont actually chose caring as a vocation (as you have done) but just end up in it and really dont care for what they do or the people they care for. Sad but true.

MoS - hope you got a better night's rest last night. And be careful with your back with all that furniture moving.

morning all
mslucy drunk is good Hope you are getting lots of support there from your DH

bumps lovely to 'see' you. How awful about that poor lady. Makes me so very sad.

One thing that came to light after mum died was that the homehelp that had been arranged for her by the hospital when she was discharged for the last time apparently hadn't been going in. She had undergone a full assessment on her ability to live alone and it was agreed that someone would go in twice a day and apparently this was not happening. Can't help but wonder if she would still be with us if they had

Having a manic day here today (no change there) have pulled out all the furniture in lounge and study and had a good clean ready ofor the new floor. For a change, the fitters actually turned up on time, in fact a little early and on the right day which is pretty good! Thank god G & H are at nursery today until 1pm and I'm just hoping it is all finished before they get back as house is in chaos with furniture in all the wrong rooms

bumps how horrible to find out things like that. you really do naively hope that the people in carer roles are there for reasons like you ie. because they care and want to help but clearly not. at least there are still people like you out there and i'm sure you'll soon get to see which of your colleagues are which.

mos that must be so upsetting to hear things like that, it must make the grief so much harder to process too.

i hope your new floor is going well and looks fantastic when it's done.

i'm working from home today. having had to deal with the shittiest time at work this year i asked if i could work from home 2 days per week during august so i can spend a bit more time with the dcs during the holiday. my boss agreed immediately. its lovely. our nanny has taken them out for a couple of hours so i could clear the bulk of the work i had to do today and now i'm ready to play again!

Grrrr.... pc just shut down my page for no apparent reason and i lost a big long post

I'll try again...

Sorry for being rubbish, haven't been doing much newsworthy, just running around keeping kids from climbing the walls/killing each other.

DD has been having swimming lessons all week and absolutely loves them, she's so confidant in the water now. It's by far the best money i've ever spent on her. The pool is in a gym and i was planning on joining myself anyway so i've signed her up for saturday lessons in the autumn and will get ds1 a membership too and bring him with us on Saturdays as he's very upset at not getting to go this week (too young for lessons).

I think i'm just about sorted for september, books and nametags are ordered so i just need to pick them up a pair of runners each now [prays sales are still on somewhere]

We went to my parents for dinner on Sunday as my cousins are all over from Manchester; 9 adults, 1 teenager and 6 kids for dinner strained even my parents ridiculously big dining table but it was lovely to see them and the kids got along brilliantly. One of my cousins is renowned for his magic touch with kids and sure enough he walked in the door and picked up A for a cuddle and A didn't protest one bit but let him hold him for ages... even dp has days where A won't let him pick him up and he's generally worse around crowds of people so i was very The other two spent most of the dinner sitting on the same cousin's knees so he was popular all round

Their brother and his wife are arriving tomorrow with three more kids so we'll head up again this weekend to see them.

Hope everyone else is enjoying the last stretch of the summer hols

evening all hope you are all well.... Just checking in but going to bed soon as am wacked.. ;)

just popping in to say hi.
It's my 40th birthday and I had a fab time.
Delicious steak and chips and creme brulee. brilliant presents and lots of lovely messages.
Last week was shit but today has been great. And the fun continues tomorrow.

mslucy happy birthday for yesterday!! Hope you are very spoilt this weekend - good to hear you so chirpy.

Hello.
Haven't been on in a few days but all is fine here.
Our child-free night was good, and apparently the boys were good for my friend, but I don't fully believe her! lol

mslucy Glad you had a nice birthday.

Happy Birthday mslucy and welcome to the fortysomething section of this group. i'm glad you had a great time.

sm what childfree night? what did you do (or do i not really want to know!!)?

this stupid weather looks like it's here to stay for a while. i took the dcs to meet some friends in portsmouth yesterday and had a good time at the historic dockyard. all good except for slight monsoon conditions at times.

hello all,
belated birthday wishes mslucy hope you have a nice time today.

SM glad you had a nice child free night

KBN we are thinking of 'doing' portsmouth in a few weeks as its quite a short drive from 'mum's' place. I remember doing the naval dockyard with mum and dad when I was younger and really want to go and see the Mary Rose. My dad was one of the divers involved in her recovery so very close to the heart for me.

House still a tip although the floor looks good apart from the fact that they have 'bodged' the door bar between study and conservatory which has a join in it and also the door doesn't shut properly.

Hope everyone doing ok

wow at your dad MOS. was diving part of his normal work? how amazing that must have been.

in any event i better warn you that the hull of the mary rose isn't viewable this year as they're doing some work on it. the mary rose museum is interesting though but just in case you might want to leave it until next year, as the tickets aren't cheap! have you been up the spinnaker tower in portsmouth yet? we ran out of time but it looks good.

Dad was in the navy when he was younger when he learnt to dive. He then did it as a hobby and was one of the divers involved in the several years of excavations on the MR before she was raised. I was there on the day she was raised and it was quite exciting.

Shame it is closed, will perhaps leave it til next year. Haven't been there for years or been up the tower, don't do heights too well.
I remember going to Portsmouth a lot when younger and mum and dad took DC1 and 2 a few times and took them on a submarine. Have found hundreds of photos of it in their stuff that I'm ploughing through. Having brought boxes of stuff back from their house last year which has been cluttering up my dining room I'm now sorting through it and taking it back down!

Hi all!

Happy birthday mslucy. Glad to hear that you're feeling bright.

MOS, that's really interesting, I love the Mary Rose. You'll have to see if you can scan the old pics - I'll love to nose through some of them! Rubbish news that the floor was bodged - will they be able to come back and sort it soon? The tower is nasty - I refuse to do it, but I've seen a video filmed up there by my neice (my sis lives in Southsea) and even that made me queesy!

We've had some good news and some bad news here this week. I have been offered a job for a month at J's work, which should (assuming I get the M&S job) take me up to when I would start training. This means I can finally get myself a new bra or two, and M can have the new nappies she (and I) so desperately needs!

Bad news is that M's heart condition is worse than we thought at the last consultation. Despite the fact she hasn't shown any typical issues (i.e. slow to crawl/walk, and overweight) it is obviously something we will have to deal with at some point. It seems likely she will need an operation at some point, probably not for 12/15 years, though, and it will limit her ability cope with stressfull conditions. Our consultant has suggested that means no sports, no flying and no having babies (I have sobbed my heart out over this). However, a friend of a friend who is a cardio surgeon in America has tld me that the prognosis may not be a severe as this, and may only prevent her from doing extreme sports.

We have another round of tests near Christmas, and then she will need 6 monthly consults and tests until she is 4 and a half. At that point they will decide whether to operate then (allowing enough time to recover before starting school) or postpone a year. I think they woud then do yearly consults/tests until things look bad enough to warrant an op.

We need to ammend her diet and we will need to monitor illnesses much closer, but I think other than that, it's my three least favourite words "wait and see".

Have had a horrid night talking about it all on Skype with the US doc last night, and I'm nackered, so I'm off to bed. Night.

We went to the England friendly at Wembley on wednesday. My friend had the boys from 3:30pm wednesday and I met them all at another friends house at 11am on thursday.
It was a nice night and to finish it off, me and dp walked the 3 miles from hatton cross to home as it was a lovely evening, but then straight to sleep.

mrsy I am so so sorry for the news on M's heart condition
I can't begin to imagine the upset and worry this is causing for your whole family.
Like your US doc says though, it might not be that severe, and in the next 25-30 years, who knows what kind of medical marvels they will come up woth that will help her as an adult and maybe even to have her own children.
Try to stay positive.

MrsY... I'm so sorry the news wasn't as positive as you hoped. You must have been in bits hearing all that while you were there on your own I hope your american doctor friend is right and her consultant is doing the usual british/irish medical standard of overstating the problem massively to cover his own arse.

Keep in mind... even if the prognosis is as appallling as he's implied there are medical breakthroughs happening all the time, her condition may be entirely fixable by the time she want sto have a child

Thanks guys!

Yeas, I am trying to keep positive, although I have to say that is not my strong suit! I'll admit that the idea that she might not be able to have her own children really got to me. I called my big bro who sent my nephew (15 yo) round straight away, and he was able to join us a little later. We went to lunch and then he drove me home. I couldn't speak to John, so my newphew had to talk to him and tell him what had been said!

I'm not going by myself again!

Still having some low moments, especially when I see her looking after her dolls. :sad: But I guess we're looking at at least 20 years, so who knows what may happen...

Hope you are all well and enjoying your weekends!

oh mrsy what awful things to hear when she's so young. so much more to go through until you have to accept the more downside of what the consultant said. at the very least the cardio surgeon in the us can provide you with a list of things for you to ask further about at your next consult and research between now and then too. i'm glad you're not going by yourself again, it must be so stressful trying to look after M, hear what the doctor is saying, take it in and think of anything to ask and then still have to get you both home again.

big, big hugs to you all.

sm that sounds lovely. what a fantastic treat for you. i'm glad you enjoyed it. i nearly went to the game too but had a friend's birthday that i'd promised to go to so turned the tickets down in the end.

we had a round the house day yesterday and went to bexhill to meet some friends and spend some time at the de la warr pavilion today. it's such a lovely building and there's a great anthony gormley exhibition on the roof but unfortunately there's also heart attack inducing railings up there too so we didn't last long up there with ds! we spent a few hours on the beach where ds got stung by a wasp. cue screams immediately it happened but only for about 2 minutes until the chocolate cake was produced...it seemed to have miraculous curing abilities.

MrsY I really don't know what to say, but looking at reproductive science and medicine, think of all the things they do now as a matter of course that wasn't even being thought of 20/30 years ago. Then allow yourself to think of the possibilities of things that will be found in the next 20/30 years.

I'm thinking of taking the dummy away from Luke.
I just can't handle the fights over them any more.
Jacob has been off the dummy for nearly a year, but he will always take Luke's and hide with it, or steal it from him when he is asleep and I can't take the constant screaming and battles over a dummy.
Would I be really mean to make Luke go cold-turkey on it?
he'd only miss it for a few days wouldn't he before he found another method of self-soothing?
Thoughts please

just popping in briefly before (hopefully!) some sleep
mrsY so sorry about the news about M. Please try not to get too stressed about it. My nephew was diagnosed with a serious heart condition when he was a baby. It was picked up on a scan before he was born and they operated on him when he was a few months old. He is now 17 and plays rugby and is very proud of the (very faint) scar on his chest.
Of course you and John will worry and of course you will have to have regular tests and check ups but hopefully it may not be as bad as you think now.
Hugs to you and sod it that hugs apparently aren't very mumsnety xxx

SM... i'm no help i'm afraid, dd and ds1 gave theirs to Santa when they were 3.11 and 3.6 so they still had theirs when there was a baby in the house wanting one. I'm a firm believer that a dummy does more good than harm so was never overly pushed about them giving them up. In fact we actively encouraged A to start taking one as he couldn't manage it until 8 months and i felt it might help with his mouth movements.... the SAT has since confirmed that it was absolutely the right decision in his case as anything that forces his to use his mouth and coordinate those muscles is a good thing.

Had Jacobs appointment letter through for his tonsil op.
The pre-assessment is on 24th August and the op is scheduled for September 1st.

it was my beautiful dd's 5th, yes 5th, birthday today.

as she's an august baby she had a joint party with one of her school friends at the end of term so today was going to be a lot more low key....hmmm, that turned into 7 kids and 7 adults going on the london eye, then onto giraffe for lunch, stopping at every overly tourist 'performance artist' on the south bank, back to ours for tea and games. it was full on but absolutely brilliant. all the bigger kids were so good when out and about and so excited by things. she's just at that age when things are really so much easier and definitely loads of fun. we even managed to avoid any major meltdowns. my parents have now taken her off for a few days camping (or not, depending on the weather) and i miss her already.

i seem to be on a bit of a high after a birthday day...that's all wrong isn't it?