Swim, watch, walk and first tooth out

Monday 31st: Asher really enjoyed the swim today. Her new fun activity is jumping off the step in the deep end.
Anastasia wasn't that sure about it all.
I made a video as I had so many photos.

Tuesday 1st Jan 2019. First children photo for this year.
And a fun day in town. Dad wasn't interested in the movie the kids wanted to watch, so he watched Anastasia while the rest of us were in the movie. Thankfully she fell asleep in her buggy. Asher was at a carer. So it was a nice treat to get to watch another movie with the children.
Enjoying the games again.

Wednesday 2nd: We managed to get a carer for Asher again this morning so that we could take the kids up to the lookout.
This back-pack is the one we bought when Rachel was a baby. So nice to be able to use it with Anastasia.

Perfect weather. Just so beautiful.
Again a video to include more photos from the day.

It got hot this afternoon, so Ruth enjoyed dressing Anastasia like Moana (you can guess what was on TV recently). :-)
Fun on the trampoline

Friday 4th: Ruth enjoying reading to Anastasia

and Asher.

Saturday 5th: It was so hot today that I suggested we head to the tea room for ice cream. Everyone was thrilled at the idea. Asher did really well (as we forgot her buggy) and Anastasia had a little bit (she still needs to stay off dairy).

Hezekiah and Hannah went for a swim later this afternoon. I was really moved by this big family who were at the pool. Apparently they were here on a previous day when Brendon had taken them. They included our two in their games and were so kind and friendly. It was really special.

Asher has also lost her first baby tooth. We had seen they were getting loose and saw the gaps growing between the teeth. Her right one is out but that left one is very loose (and you can see the gap between it and the next tooth - it almost looks like it's in the middle). It was so strange to not hear about the wiggly tooth for days or weeks before it came out. And we don't even know when it came out. So quite a different experience for us with Asher. I suspect it will be the same for most of her baby teeth.

Crawling, teeth and netball season over

Wed 8th: Ruth was excited about getting her own Math's workbook. They don't need to own a copy, but it makes it much easier and also allows her to work ahead if she wants to. She is year 8 this year, and doing year 10 work already. And a young year 8 too. Well done Ruth. I'm so glad you can enjoy Math with me. :-)
Thursday 9th: It's a great help having Megan take the children to school on Monday and Wednesday morning. Rachel also helps with a lot of the other school trips. On Thursday morning though, Rachel is working, so I have to pack Anastasia up and head up with them all. What a stunning morning though. I quickly took this photo as I left her classroom. Spring seems a little early this year.









Anastasia enjoying some of Asher's favourite books.
BELOW: I wanted to get a video of Anastasia's new forward movement. A proper leopard crawl now. And I was so impressed when she got up on her knees for a bit too. It won't be long and she will be crawling around very quickly. As it is she can get all around the room very easily.

Ruth was a very happy girl today as her friend gave her these two slimes. Ruth does love slime. And these were such lovely colours and the purple one was also very unique with the bumps in it.
Ruth had a very fun audio for us to listen to. They are learning about recording in Music and so their teacher had let them listen to this. Have a listen here (but use earphones).
It's brilliant. She had me listen first and I was convinced the children had put something on really loud in the room next door. Then it was Brendon's turn, then Hannah and Hezekiah.

Hannah was so funny. She kept looking around.
Our ears and brain truly are amazing creations. Such fun too.

Such a lovely photo. Such pleasure on Anastasia's face.
We had a bit of a jolt this evening just before 8pm. Only a 4.3 but it rattled the house and Hannah. It's been ages since we last felt one.

Friday 10th: Ruth took a photo of the sunrise this morning but added a star filter on her phone. A very pretty picture, even if there is some artistic licence in it. :-)
Asher had a seizure around midday today. It was almost 2 minutes, so a little longer than most of the recent ones. It made me realize though how long it has been since a long seizure (over 3 minutes). It's been over 16 months. So we are very grateful for this. She also had a lot of violent arm movements after the seizure and it reminded me of how we used to get that every time but she hasn't had that in a while too. Hopefully it's just a once off and doesn't happen too much again.

Rachel headed off this morning to have lunch with a friend and then work at the Disney on Ice. She didn't get to see any of it as she was working as a cashier, but she was excited about just being a part of it. It's fun to see all the girls dressed up for their special outing.
She called me after her shift to share her excitement. There had been a mother come and ask if there was a first aider. Rachel said she had first aid training and offered to see if she could help.

She gave the exact advice that was needed and the mother came back after the show to thank her. She was so pleased to be able to use some of her training in a "real life" situation to help someone.
Anastasia sees Asher on an iPad so often, so she is very interested in it. She loves the Giggle Gang. This must be the youngest I have had a little one on a device. How things change.
Saturday 11th: Final netball day today and wonderfully it was in Hawarden today, so I managed to get up to watch.
Great jump Ruth.
I was great to be able to watch again as I could see how much Ruth has improved through the season. Well done Ruth.

And then at 5 they had the prize giving for the club. Ruth's certificate said "for your commitment and improved netball skills this season."
For not having ever played before, she did very well this year and we are very proud of her.

Great to be able to give their coach a couple of gifts to as a thanks for all her time and effort.

Sunday 12th: We sorted out this toy basket and Anastasia decided the basket was a great teething ring. :-)
She finally has a couple of teeth through. The top left and bottom right.

Some other sorting out that happened was in two of the kitchen cupboards. We had way too many mugs (some very old ones) so Ruth went through all the mugs and all the plastic things. She did a great job sorting it all out and repacking the cupboards. Nothing like some extra little jobs to earn some bonus pocket money.
Anastasia is getting really good at crawling forwards now. Rachel was surprised when she saw her crawling forward at church this morning. Rachel keeps feeling like she goes away for a bit and comes back with Anastasia having learnt something new. She has gotten really quick at getting around the lounge now and this evening decided a couple of times to head over to Anakin's box.
So although a couple of little jobs got done, it was still a nice relaxing day to end the week. Rachel stayed with friends after church and then went to a worship service with them in the evening. As they were after 10pm getting back, she just stayed over with them and came home in the morning.

Holiday week 2

Monday 23rd: Ruth's guide leader sent her an e-mail this morning letting her know how very close she is to getting her Outdoor Gold Challenge. She is then really close to having her Gold Endeavour completed (an excellent achievement).
She just has to do one activity each day this week and she will be done. So her leader has offered to email her each day with just one task. It was great motivation for Ruth and not only did she get her task done today, but she sorted her shelf and guiding things too.
RIGHT: Ruth often enjoys "throwing" Anastasia up. Although she doesn't really leave her hands.



Ruth also likes giving Anastasia sitting practice - working on strengthening her "core". She gets her to look all around and Anastasia's job is to not fall over. :-)






Ruth's sorting mood continued and she offered to sort the messy bottom draw for a small fee. I was happy to pay it as it was such a mess and she did a good job of getting it usable again.

Tuesday 24th: Anastasia doesn't sleep as well at night as any of my others, so although I have wanted to delay starting solids for as long as possible (and just go straight to finger foods like we did with Asher) I am desperate to find something to help me get some more solid sleep. After 4 nights of her waking even early than her normal 3am, I decided it was worth giving it a try.
She was not terribly impressed.

Poor Hannah had a filling fall out (again) and so she was in quite a bit of pain. After calling a number of dentists, we finally got an appointment for this afternoon. So I headed into town with all 5 of them. The decision was made to rather pull the tooth out. It is a baby tooth and the adult tooth is not too far behind it. It's a molar, so may have only fallen out in a years or so, but it was worth getting it out with the pain it was causing. And it really isn't worth putting another filling in. It makes me wish I had just refused to have the filling put in, in the first place. There was a small bit of decay between two molars, but was not causing any pain.
Thankfully the trip went really well and although we were very early, we didn't have long to wait as we could get her in just after we arrived. It was great that Hannah had gone to the library this morning and reported on her last two books. So she had her Pizza voucher and we could pick up a pizza for her while we were in town. She was pleased when the injection started wearing off and she could eat a bit. It took a while for the lip to get back to normal though (so a half paralyzed smile for this photo). She was so kind and shared her pizza with the family (only having two slices herself). She even asked when Rachel would be back as she wondered if she could keep a piece for her. How very kind.

Wednesday 25th: Anzac day today but Brendon worked almost a full day. Ruth got her sundial started for her next Guide activity.

And she enjoyed feeding Anastasia this afternoon too. It went much better than yesterday but she is not really interested in it. The frustrating thing about it all is that I know I have more milk than what Anastasia will drink. She often only drinks from one side and I often feel she could get more.
So I've got enough but it's perhaps not quite fatty enough to get her going longer through the night. So I've also started making myself some chocolate shakes (with loaded protein, a bit of fat and extra things like brewers yeast which is supposed to be really good for milk production) in the hopes to try and get my milk quality up. I've been putting a load of effort into my diet over the last week, but it doesn't seem to be enough.
Thursday 26th: Ruth's new phone arrived today. She had been using my old phone but her service provided "upgraded" and now the phone won't work in our area. So she has been looking on-line for an iPhone and is very excited about it's arrival. She will be paying it off over the next 6 months (or sooner if she gets extra jobs done and earns the money more quickly).
RIGHT: Ruth's first selfie on her iPhone.





And she took this one of Anastasia giving me big kisses. Just like Hezekiah did at this age.

And this one of Anastasia wrinkling up her nose. She does it even more than this - but it's the first time we have gotten it on a photo.
Unfortunately Anastasia has had two really bad nights, waking at 11pm crying, and again not long after midnight. I'm not sure if the porridge upset her stomach, or if it's just teething that is worrying her. So for now I have stopped with the solids and am just focusing on getting my milk quality up. She is enjoying chewing on the teething rings that Nana sent her. :-)

Yesterday Hezekiah and Hannah went to help an elderly neighbour with some gardening as her hands are getting sore from arthritis. We are wondering if Hezekiah got bitten by something while he was there, as this morning he has over 8 bites on his leg. They are quite swollen and very itchy. Poor guy. At least some calamine lotion gives a bit of relief. I called the free health line to double check if there was reason to see the doctor with the bites. The advice was to get him to a doc to just check them out because of the amount and size of them.

So Brendon got home a bit early so that he could take him. The doctor gave him some antihistamine and a script for antibiotics just in case they got infected (then we don't need to go back for the script). Thankfully the one dose of antihistamine was enough and they looking much better on Friday morning.
I had suggested they pick up eggs and visit the tea rooms after the doctors appointment and Hezekiah decided to invite Hannah to join them. So the three of them enjoyed an ice cream treat.

Ruth made omelettes for dinner this evening. She went to great effort to make it a little more fancy. She also had a lot of options on her menu.
Friday 27th: Asher had a seizure at 6pm and then she got off her bed at about 7. Just as Brendon got to the room, she fell with another seizure. At first I thought it may have been because she spat out half her lunch time meds. But after the 2nd one, I was not so convinced. (Note: By Saturday we realized the reason - she was getting sick. She had a really runny nose through the weekend but thankfully no fever and no more seizures). And that's only 5 seizures this month. Which is excellent.

This week I started reading Swiss Family Robinson to the children. I've never read one of the classics to the younger ones. And it's something Rachel and I enjoyed so much of when she was younger. So it was good to get them started. It will take a while for them to learn to understand it all - but they are slowly getting into it.
Ruth suggested they draw pictures about the story. She even has a little book she has started with a picture for each chapter.
Hezekiah wasn't finished his dinner, so he was off to the side (otherwise the messed rice would get lost in the blue rug).
Saturday 28th: Anastasia just loves doing this. I call her "sit ups". She lifts her legs as well as her head. Such a strong little stomach.
Unfortunately she has a really nasty cough. It's gotten worse today. So with that and Asher's very runny nose, I thought it best that we not go to church tomorrow.

Sunday 29th: Ruth has a cough too, so she stayed at home with me so that she could help with Asher and get a bit more of a rest herself too.
Anastasia really enjoyed her guitar playing and held tightly onto the guitar when she brought it close. She must have really enjoyed the vibrations on her tummy.

Such a happy little girl, even with a cough and teeth moving around in her gums upsetting her.

Ruth has been longing to do some ironing (I NEVER iron). So today ended up being a nice quiet day for her to get her wish. She ironed Brendon's karate gi for him.

And so, the holidays come to an end.