Hair cuts, turkey and talking

Saturday 30th: Asher was having fun with the carpet this morning. I always get a bit nervous when I can't actually see her properly. Thankfully just saying "Where is she?" will get her to respond - normally with "Where's she?" and then "I can't" (long pause) "see you".

She does still so love playing peek-a-boo. She actually heard me saying "boo" to Anastasia the other day and she came over with a big smile, wanting to play too. So I think this might be why she is showing a bit more interest in Anastasia now. I can see lots of fun ahead when Anastasia can play peek-a-boo with Asher.

I was looking back at comparative photos between the children when they were babies. Anastasia does look a lot like Hannah and Hezekiah. Asher looked quite different at this 1 month photo comparison (not shown here).

And the 3 year old photos also show Asher looking rather different to Rachel and Hannah. I then realized that the older two got hair cuts when they were around 2. So although much later, I decided Asher really did need a hair cut. Her hair looks so thin.
Cutting it will hopefully help thicken it up and also just be easier to handle. She often takes her elastics out and then we have hair hanging everywhere. Especially a pain when it goes in her food.
So although this photo was taken on Sunday - I put it here to show what the new hair cut looks like. She actually looks a bit more like the older two now.
It was a challenge to cut her hair, but it went a lot better than I anticipated. The kitchen step lady worked well as a seat (with a place for her to hold on) and then after these photos were taken she started trying to get down, so Daniel came and held her still so I could try get it looking somewhat neat. :-) Thanks for the help Daniel.
Hannah decided she also wanted her hair cut. It was VERY long and beautiful with the lovely curls she has. But its also a pain to have to brush such long hair. So it will be much easier for her to handle now, and it's still nice and long.
Ruth is very excited about her main Christmas present - that finally got sorted today. My old phone was easy enough to "open" so she could use it for her prepaid sim card (which also thankfully fitted). So we gave her a $20 prepaid to get her started. She has longed for a "proper" phone for so long. So she is thrilled. She is on Whatsapp if anyone uses that and wants to keep in contact. :-)

Such a cute little pose.
This evening Asher came running to me at 7:30 and I thought a seizure was about to come. It didn't, but she felt horrible and had pain. This happened again at 9pm (she sits up in bed and when we get to her we can see on her face that things are not right). At 9:10 she had a seizure and went really blue. She was very unsettled afterwards too. This nightly things are so horrible to watch. My heart aches for her.

A park trip again today for Rachel, Daniel, Hannah and Hezekiah. Thanks for the photo Rachel. Unfortunately Hezekiah didn't want to be in it.
Daniel came on Friday for an extended visit (with them heading off to do things with his family on Sunday). It was nice that he could join us at the Patoa Discipleship Project on Friday night at the farm.

Sunday 31st: Ruth having some fun with Hezekiah on snapchat. The one thing she was so looking forward to having on a smart phone. Rachel got herself a new phone on boxing day which she got set up over the last couple of days and spent a lot of time having fun on snapchat too.
Ruth got this fun one of them.

More of Ruth and Hezekiah.

Rachel took these of Anastasia.

One of the first ones that Rachel did with Asher was the cat sticking it's tongue out. So then she kept sticking her tongue out to try and see the big tongue again. :-)

Hannah, Hezekiah and Rachel all Christmas bunnies.

Some fun ones Rachel did.

And to make sure everyone in the family is included in the fun, I had to include some of Mum and Dad.

Ruth created this game for them to play. Scooter hockey perhaps?

Monday 1st January 2018. And just like that we are into the new year. Daniel and Rachel had a long day at Pigeon Bag with his family yesterday, so they just went home with them and headed up back to our place this morning. Thankfully they were happy to get helping get the house ready for lunch. I had already put the turkey into the slow cooker at 4am (after one of Anastasia's night feeds). Ruth had asked that we do a turkey (for the experience) and so we decided it would be nice to enjoy that today.
Ruth made some starters while the roast vegetables finished cooking. Rachel, Ruth and Hannah all worked together to get those ready for the oven. I forgot to take a photo of the meal, but deciding to do the turkey in the slow cooker was a good idea. I knew that it wouldn't be undercooked, and if I cooked it a bit too long, it would just mean it would fall apart (which it did). It wasn't dry though (as is often the worry) and was a lovely lunch. We were pleased to have the Fazakerley's join us (I only noticed later that Christopher didn't get in the photo - sorry Christopher).

Ruth was excited about making jelly for desert and we had a left over pav from Christmas, so we enjoyed that with whipped cream. We also had some sparking grape juice (in wine glasses) so that was a nice treat too. We were thankful for the enjoyable day together and the lovely food we could share.
Unfortunately Asher had a seizure at 4pm, just as the Fazakerley's were getting ready to leave. Thankfully it was short.
We had been given the boxes of apple juice and Dad suggested using the Soda Stream to make Appletiser with it. Yum Yum.

And finally I managed to get a video of Anastasia "talking" (you can see this was after 9pm). She was talking away to Brendon and as soon as I came behind them she stopped. So I had to hide behind him and then when she started talking again, I carefully slipped my phone to the side to catch it. :-)