Chlorine and answered prayer

Sunday 14th: Brendon and Hezekiah at the park.

Monday 15th: Everyone was so pleased when we saw Little Miss using the cat flap on her own. And that she can come back in easily too. Now to just teach her to use the sand outside rather than her litter box.

Ruth and Hezekiah enjoying the warm morning to do some painting outside under the shade of a tree.

Tuesday 16th: Little Miss is so cute. She just loves lying on the top of the chairs. Spread out so much.

Wednesday 17th: Brownies and Guides starts up again today. Thankfully it's moved to a Wed from a Thursday as Ruth now has dance on Thursday.
She is pleased that she will be able to attend Guides this year. I just have to adjust to having 3 afternoon / evenings of travelling.
She had one last thing to do for her very last brownie badge. Stacking ice. Not as easy as it sounds, but once you have worked out how to do it - then she said it's easy and fun. She managed to get all the way up to 13 pieces.
Thursday 18th: On the way home from dance this evening we stopped in at the Love's to pick up our eggs. I asked if she happened to have some plants to help Ruth out with a new Guiding badge. She has to plant something and give it away. So she was able to get a whole collection of little seedlings that she planted this evening - as a gift for me. They are beautiful flowers (white and purple - my favourite) so I do hope they grow nicely.
Friday 19th was the Junior School Swimming sports. Ruth was able to join in, so that was nice. It was a bit chilly though, so it wasn't too pleasant for the children.
This week and next the school had swimming lessons organized as part of the curriculum. Thankfully a company had sponsored the lessons, so they were highly subsidized. I called the school to find out if Ruth would be able to join in with the lessons, and they were more than happy for her to join. What a blessing.
Both girls are learning so much from the lessons. Hannah has especially made wonderful progress over the last couple of weeks with all the swimming. She is putting her head under the water - which is huge for her. Because of overcoming that fear - she has been able to jump into the pool and do so many other fun activities. Even with the swimming sports today I was just thrilled to see Hannah putting her head down into the water and swimming (I just happened to take the photo below when she lifted her head).
Unfortunately we have been having some real bad behaviour from Hannah over the last couple of weeks. It build up so much this week that I was again desperately praying that God would help me on Friday afternoon. I just could not understand things. When she got home on Friday she was acting the way she would if she had food that she reacts to.
Again I think the Lord answered my prayers by directing my thoughts to the answer. The chlorine! I wrote to the FAILSAFE facebook page that I am on, to get some feedback from other mothers and to find out if it was the chlorine that was causing it all. I had over a dozen mothers telling me how they have the same thing with their children who are very food sensitive. Thankfully it didn't stop there and they gave me some ideas of how to help Hannah. So for now, once she gets home from school next week, she will immediately have an Epsom salt and backing soda bath. These will help neutralize the reaction as well as wash off the chlorine.

Hannah's teacher has said that she is well behaved at school, so I even asked the other mothers about this. Could it really be a reaction, if she was fine at school and then just fell apart once she got home. I had many mothers describing the exact same thing with their children. And since then I have spoken to another mother who says her daughter was like that as a child and her husband says she is still like that. While around other people, they keep everything together and all the tension just bottles up inside. Then once they are home and in a safe environment, they relax and then all that tension just explodes.
I am so thankful that I have been able to learn from others and understand this all a bit more. It was a rather stressful week and I was so thankful for the hope that the Lord gave by the end of the week.
(Note: A week later, 26th Feb, I can say that it has worked. Hannah is doing so much better. All the issues we had in the first weeks of school are gone and we had a really easy week. I thank and praise the Lord for answering my prayers for help.)

Holidays begin

Saturday 12th saw me off with the older girls for an afternoon and dance. I only managed to get a photo of Rachel in her solo outfit. The group one you will have to see on the video.
My two penguins. They both did really well. Hannah enjoyed it so much that she kept complaining that Rachel got to do two more concerts on Sunday. She wanted to do more as well. :-)

Ruth did really well and got the trophy for the most promising ballet dancer. I think this was possibly because of the exceptionally high mark she received in her exam this year. Her teacher had said she didn't know it was possible to get such a high mark. :-) We are so proud of you Ruth. Well done.
Sunday 13th: Asher had another "meltdown" today. She was so upset this afternoon. Ruth was so helpful and got some stickers out to distract her.

I got to spend extra time with Rachel today with dropping her off and then picking her up later from her lift for the extra concerts she had today. I was thankful I didn't have to do the full trip to the concert. And we got to chat about so much again.
We took this photo on our way home, in the Weka Pass. We spotted a bit of green, so decided to capture it. There is not much green around us at the moment as it has been so terribly dry.

As we got home I remembered to take a photo of the hedge. Brendon and I cleared all the branches along the road this weekend. We were really grateful for our "new" neighbours help. Ruth helped by being inside watching Asher on the monitor while she had her nap.
Ruth had been told by her Brownie leader that she had come 2nd in the 3rd term competition to create a poem / song. This week she got this in the post as a prize. :-)
Monday 14th: Asher had another melt down this morning. Ruth tried her best to draw her out of it with her favourite book and the stickers again, but this time it didn't work. She just stood in the corner of the kitchen and cried and cried.
In desperation I asked her if she wanted to go outside. I didn't really want to go out myself as it was getting so close to the middle of the day and really hot outside. She went straight for her pram in the garage though, and settled down straight away. I was able to bring the pram into the house and she happily played in there for a while.
These episodes are happening more often now and I think are the main reason her neurologist said the other AED's available are not even worth trying at this stage. She had one of these meltdowns in his office at our last visit. At the time I thought it was only because she was tired. Now I realize he was recognizing what he often sees. Sadly this may be a direct side effect of the medication that she is on. For some reason it seems to be effecting her more.
Right: Rachel received her First Aid Level 2 certificate in the post today.
At 5pm Asher had a 9 1/2 minute vacant seizure. We had to give her the extra medication at 5 minutes and she really struggled to settle afterwards. She was exhausted and I could see how badly she wanted to sleep, but I could also see how the drugs were keeping her from it. She couldn't lie still for more than a few seconds. I had her on my bed with me and after almost an hour of wriggling around, she finally fell sleep.
She woke just before 7 but was still very tired. I tried to get her to eat something, but she was not interested and climbed into her bed. So she got her evening medication and went back to sleep.
Left: This afternoon the kids got to see the fire truck race past. There was a big fire not too far from us. It has been such a dry year that the fires have been a problem. Thankfully the 14 fire trucks and helicopter got it under control.

Tuesday 15th: Asher enjoying the new page of stickers that Ruth has given her to play with.
Right: Rachel and Ruth had seem some "galaxy" clothes artwork and gave it a try this afternoon. It worked really nicely. I just don't know what it's going to look like after it's been washed. It's just normal paint (not proper fabric pain).
Wednesday 16th: Hannah asked me today if Puss was pregnant because she had noticed her teats were bigger. So while she was sitting in this chair next to my computer, I kept my eye on her. To my amazement, I could actually see the movement on her tummy. So I called the children over to gently touch her tummy as it moved around. It was such an amazing experience. My guess was that there were 3 as I had felt two on her tummy and a 3rd quite a bit further up on her side. Ruth was hoping it would be 4. We had no idea how long she has been pregnant. We quickly got a box ready for her in the passage cupboard, hoping she would choose that area to have the kittens (as the door can be left just open enough for her). Little did we know that we would only have the one day to enjoy her pregnancy as the kitten were born that night (more in the next post).
Ruth and I have been rather busy with making loom band candy canes for our Christmas cards this year. We discussed the idea of making biscuits that we would not be able to eat - and the decision was made that we would have to break the biscuit tradition and come up with another plan.
Today Ruth signed up for the Library's holiday reading program, so she read to me while I worked. It's a lovely story, so I enjoyed listening to it while I kept my hands busy.
Ruth will be looking after a neighbours chooks (and checking on the other animals) while they are away. So she went over this afternoon to get all of her instructions. She came home with this onesie. Cute. :-)

Bubbles, bottles and Brownie badges

Saturday 28th: The girls enjoyed having Brooke come over for a play today. The sand pit desperately needs more sand, but the girls enjoyed it anyway.

Sunday 29th: Rachel had a ballet practice in Leighfield today. Her teacher was overseas for 3 weeks, and so they have a few extra practices to make up for it. The concert is only a couple of weeks away now.
So I asked Hannah if she wanted to join me and enjoy a different area for our "parent child" outing. She was a bit nervous about this big slide, but soon realized that it was not steep at all, so she had to push her way down it. :-)

The school playground is nice and high up - so we got a nice photo from up there. It was really cold though. I had to walk down to the car to get my jacket.

Hannah had loads of fun. She said it felt like she was on an activity of Survivor. The children don't get to watch much of Survivor (Brendon and I record it for ourselves to watch). There have been the odd occasion that we let them watch some of the activities though. So I thought that was an interesting comparison. It was a lovely big and adventurous play group.
The climbing wall prooved too hard. At least without shoes on. She couldn't get much higher than this. It did make her talk about going back to Clip and Climb though. She wants to give that a go again.
This afternoon we watched another episode of Star Wars. A friend has graciously lent us his whole set and we are really enjoying watching them as a family.
They are long movies though, so it was still going when Asher woke from her nap. Thankfully she created a new game where she unpacked the toy basket, carefully placing each toy on a specific spot on the carpet. It kept her busy long enough for us to finish the movie. :-)
We have a few Star Wars fans in the home now. We have all really enjoyed watching them.
Monday 30th: Hezekiah had his "before school" check at the nurse today. He was so pleased with the packet of things he brought home with him. Especially his blue pencil and eraser.
Tue 1st Dec: Our monthly children photo.
Hezekiah and Asher came up with a new game today. They played really nicely with the set of indoor bowling balls (which are quite heavy). Asher saw Hezekiah using this toy honey pot to hold them and throw them, so she copied him.
Ruth spotted this rainbow just as she was heading to bed, so asked me to take a photo. :-)

Wednesday 2nd: Ruth has been working at a load of Brownie badges over the last few weeks. Today the others got to enjoy her bubble experiments. They made this cool bubble blowers with a sock pulled over a cut bottle (just cut the bottom off a plastic bottle and slip the sock over that end). They dip the sock into the bubble mix and then blow on the bottle. Just keep reminding the little ones to not breath in while the bottle is over their mouth. ;-)
They were so full of bubbles that they ended up having to go and bath or shower to get it all off.

Asher was walking around outside with Brendon when a Tonic Clonic seizure started. Thankfully this time she didn't bump herself on anything when she fell. She went very blue all around her mouth, so we were thankful that it only lasted about 1 1/2 minutes. She was very tired afterwards, but didn't get her full hour sleep. So this allowed her to get to sleep at her normal bed time.
There have been some really hot days. Asher compromised her desire to have a blanket right over her head and was content with it just on the top of her head.

Thursday 3rd: We haven't made Kombucha for ages, so I decided to move some of the glass bottles we used for that out to the garage. They got put at the back door where Asher found them this morning. I don't think they will be going out any time soon now. She had so much fun with them.
Shadow and I keeping her company while she plays. She would take the lids off, pretend to pour, put lids back on and repeat this over and over again.

This afternoon Ruth got a few more badges. She has now earned all 16 possible individual badges (ones you do at home). So there are now 2 more of those yellow and orange ones for on the back of her sash. She has enough now to fill up that gap on the back too.
It's been a bit of a joke the last 2 weeks at the amount of badges Ruth is collecting. She has worked hard and it's nice that she has accomplished so much in this last term as a Brownie.

Friday 4th: Ruth came with Asher and I to the Champion Centre today. I needed her with to help play with Asher while I did her IP (Individual Plan) with her teachers. And Ruth did a great job. There were a few times we heard Asher giving her a bit of a hard time, but she managed to distract her and get her happy again.
The meeting was myself, the 3 therapists (speech, physio and early intervention teacher), the Team Leader and Family Support person. We arrived at 9am (rather than our normal 10am) so that we could spend that first hour together. I had a list of areas that I could think through and record celebrations, challenges, and goals.
We had a really good time talking through the different areas. I was pleased that I had filled my page with so many things that could be celebrated from the last 6 months. I am also glad that I was able to be honest about the areas where there are real challenges and even more so, the areas that I am struggling with. I got so much encouragement and support from all of the ladies. I am again so very thankful for the opportunity we have to be a part of the Champion Center and all the amazing help and care that we receive.
After the IP it was morning tea and then all the other children had been invited to join for a sensory morning. There are normally 6 children in this group. 3 from 9-10, then morning tea and group singing, and then the other 3 till 12. It ended up being only one other boy joining us.
They had this "musical instrument" for the children to play with too. Asher just loved sitting and strumming (helped by Ruth). It was beautiful to listen to and so soothing for her.

Saturday 5th: Rachel needed a lift down to the Love's for another extra Ballet lesson today. So Brendon and Ruth headed out for their "parent child" outing. They went geocaching. They found 2, but forgot to take ANY photos. :-)
When they got home the extended their time together and prepared the Paua that we had been given the night before. Lots of work outside before it was brought in to get thinly sliced.
I took the opportunity to get a photo. :-)
They did a great job of it too. It tasted really good. Ruth, Brendon and I really enjoyed it. Ruth so much so that she said she wants to save up some money to ask the friend if she can buy more from him. :-)
Hannah and Hezekiah didn't want to try it. Asher was having her afternoon nap. Rachel gave it a try when she got home but it wasn't as nice having gotten a bit cold (and then heated up). It had gotten a bit tough. If it does every get made again I am sure Rachel will like it more. I think she did really well in just giving it a try. :-)
The next step will be to find out what you do with the shells. :-)

Wet, hair and food

Monday 9th saw a wet start to the day which we were all so very thankful for.
You can see how dry it is. It's been the worst drought in many years - and definitely the worst of our 7 years here.
Hezekiah just needed a jersey and his swimming hat and he was ready to go. He came in soaked - after having such a fun time.

I was really impressed with Ruth's first ever French braid. Well done Ruth.
And then it was Rachel's turn. :-)

Tuesday 10th saw Asher having a 1 minute Tonic Clonic seizure at 8am. She was happy to let Ruth cuddle her for her sleep and so I could get some things done. Ruth enjoys the cuddles too.

On Monday we got the results from Asher's hair analysis. We are thankful that there were no big intolerances that are already causing inflammation, but there were still a number of regular items on the list of things that should at least not be eaten every day for her. The advice we got was to do an elimination diet where we cut out ALL of the foods that had any reaction (even if small). Over the last 6 months her longest gap between seizures has only been 2 weeks, so we would do the diet for at least 3 but I am planning on 4 weeks. This will give us a very good indication if food is even aggravating her epilepsy at all.

Over the last 2 months she has had 21 seizures. So it really has picked up with her having 2 or 3 a week. We are going away this weekend, so my plan is to get my head around it all over the next few days and officially start next week Wednesday (after her doctor visit on Tuesday - and the day in town that this brings).
I did however start trying to cut things out already this week. I didn't allow myself to feel any pressure - but knew in my mind the items I would need to be avoiding, and so started to make changes as I could.
As I am still breastfeeding Asher, I will need to go on the same diet at her. Brendon will be starting a detox diet next week too (for his migraines) and as the big issue for us both is getting off coffee and dairy - we decided to start cutting out the coffee this week already. Dairy is also one of the items that is highest on Asher's list, so it will be good to get it all done together.
Above right: Rachel did a fish tale braid for Hannah today. Ruth acting the clown in the background. :-)
Thursday 12th saw Ruth back to brownies. She was so pleased it had started up and is very excited already about the upcoming Jamboree came (in January 2016).