20 November 2008

A diseased household

Well its been a while, Life has been 'interesting' in the Nutley residence. About 3 weeks ago now I came down with a flu which caused Duane to stay home and look after the girls. It truly knocked me about.
Then last week on Friday Caitlin was really fussy. Towards the end of the day Emma had joined in and I was totally convinced they had started teething (again - them teeth keep popping up and down, never breaking through). On Saturday we had snotty noses, gunked up eyes and a temperature so off to the doctors we went. Yep - its viral - keep an eye on them and it should slowly improve over time.

Now Duane is on my case regulary that I need to ask for help more often. I don't agree with that and told him numerous times that I'll ask for help when it is REALLY needed, and not just because I'm getting a tat tired. Well, on Friday I decided enough is enough, Caitlin had been in my arms crying for a good hour and a half and I needed to change Emma, and I had groceries on the counter I couldn't put away because I couldn't put Caitlin down at all. So I called Duane and asked him to organise some help for me asap. This is when he 'finally' realised asking for help is not as easy as it sounds. Whom can you really approach to come and help you at the drop of a hat in the middle of a working day? People just are not that readily available. Give them a days warning and all is good and people are able and willing to come to our aid... unfortunately things don't work that way with babies... they cry when they want to, not when it is convenient.

Anyways, back to the story of this post.
Both Emma and Caitlin got slightly worse on Sunday, but not enough to worry me. Duane had organised help for me for Monday (thank you Lindy and Helen!!)and Tuesday (Thank you Sue!!). Then it came to Wednesday and Les & Ruth came down to help, in spite of both of them recuperating from some sun-spot removal procedures. Can't keep the grandparents away from their sick grandchildren :)
During daytime the girls would improve quite significantly but at night they would start coughing and coughing and wake up from it. This resulted ofcourse in Duane and I getting less sleep than when they were first born and when I also started to develop a cold again on tuesday and Duane got the symptoms I had two weeks earlier.... it is hard to keep going.

So onto Wednesday (yesterday). Duane at work, and me not entirely sure what is going on with the girls. They were in principle improving, but they had coughing fits which would not be out of place on a chainsmoker with a 50 year habit. We couldn't have dinner normally, and at 7:00 the girls were in bed and sleeping - kinda - At 7:45 Caitlin woke up with major coughing and a blocked nose again. Duane decided to cave and get a humidifier (this is a bit of a weird thing - the doctors don't seem to know whether it is good or not - they mention it, then say it could do good and harm, just to try if you are game to do so) This seemed to help Caitlin. However, the increased humidity in the air sent Emma into a coughing frenzy. After about 20 minutes (and she had been removed from the room for atleast 15) we called 13Health to ask for advise on what to do. The rains had started by that time (did I mention we had torrential rains last night? no?I'll get to that later). The lady on the other end of the line told me after about 5 minutes of 'probing' questions to take the girls to the nearest emergency as soon as possible. Which is what we ended up doing. We got to Wesley Emergency in Auchenflower and the girls were seen to rather quickly and just before midnight we were driving back along the centenary motorway when we were forced into a near-flooded lane due to an accident on the side of the road. The rain was bucketing down.
We came home, gave the girls a feed and put them to bed. They went down well and I was in bed fairly shortly thereafter. I was so tired, I hadn't had a decent nights sleep in 3 nights and I had a cold which was getting worse. I hadn't been in bed for 10 minutes when Duane told me there was water in the garage. Our first thought was that something wasn't fixed right when the hot water system was replaced earlier this year and removed from the garage. We moved some cupboards, but the walls were completely dry, just half an inch of water and more coming in. So we went looking on the other side of the wall. We could see water was pooling the moment we opened the laundry door, and when I stepped out it was well above my enkle. Opened the side gate (to create more room for the water to flow to the road) and I started to use a broom to sweep the water out to the road. Part of the retaining wall between us and our next door neighbour has come down, which caused the problems. We worked together until about 2 am to get most of the water out. Then a shower and to bed.

This week is a write-off. Hopefully things will look up a bit next week. Even writing this I feel odd, people in other suburbs have lost their houses due to the rain/weather this week so really I'm complaining over nothing.... just jot that one down to me being rather tired and desparately in need of a break.

Hope you all had a good week :)

04 November 2008

Language development and learning

First of all, I realised I haven't updated this thing for a while. The girls grow so fast and learn new things every week. They had their 4 month check-up and all is well. They had their immunisations and besides a few tears, no problems at all. Duane and I are really settling into this mummy-and-daddy stuff. It truly is rather cool.

What is so cool? I've always been amazed by the learning process of babies/children etc. They come out knowing nothing and in a few short years they learn to communicate, move, coordination, cause-and-effect, etc. Pretty nifty if you ask me :)
Now we have two babies, and it is even funkier to see the differences between them.

Emma:
She is still the smaller of the two, she weighs about 1kg less than Caitlin and is about 3cm shorter. Her vocabulary at this point in time consists of a "Ggrrrr" in the back of her throat, a pfft (rasberry),"arr", a loud laugh and a cute giggle.
She is not too keen on rolling, but she discovered today she can get herself onto her tummy. Hasn't figured out how to move the bottom arm into a more comfortable position so we need to help her with that. Her hand-eye coordination is good, her head control is excelent. She sits firmly with help (balance is missing but the strength is there). When playing with different objects she uses both hands to grab hold of things. When we place her on her tummy she can keep her head up well. She doesn't really push through the arms yet, it would be rather early for it. She can stand on both legs for a few seconds with assistance. moving around is not really an issue for Emma. She will rotate around her own axle, and has this funny way of throwing her legs and bottom in the air and moving a few cm. There is not much coordination in it yet, the direction of movement is not really predictable for anyone (including her) and she runs into her sis regulary.

Caitlin:
Has a great vocab: "Grrrr" and "Pfft" have been on the repetoir for a while. On the weekend she discovered "oooww" and today she had an epiphany: She can talk without opening her mouth. Its the biggest joke ever and it makes her giggle and laugh. so now we also have "HMMMMMM". (well its more of a "HMmmmm-m-m-hmg-ggg-ha-ha-ha". We have ofcourse "AAHHhh" and "AAhhrr" and the giggle and laugh. She has been able to roll from her tummy onto her back for a few weeks, however, when it happens it still is mostly accidental and then it turns into a game. She can turn onto her tummy and has for a few weeks now, she also has not figured out the freeing up of the bottom arm and doesn't seem too interested in that to be honest. She will grab for things and use both hands, but mostly she is just happy flailing and having accidental hits on the toys we have on a dangly string near them in the play-pen.

oh, and both the girls are strong: Mr Lion and Mrs Rabbit are thrown about quite a bit, and quite some distance. Which really is an achievement: Those stuffed animals are nearly half the size of either girl.
The cutest thing is that they have discovered eachother. They are making sounds to eachother and reaching out and touching eachothers hands. Not all the time, and not very often at the same time (which is rather sad for the one who is trying to engage the other in conversation...).

Oh and lastly: That feeling everyone keeps telling you you should have as a mother the first time you look at your baby? It finally happened last week. It wasn't that I didn't love my girls, I sure have, but this all absorbing, "oh-how-cute-are-you-and-you-are-my-daughter" feeling didn't happen until last week. I wasn't worried, I knew it would happen, I just thought to mention it so I could disspell the myth of "instant motherly love" which makes so many new mums feel guilty because it so often doesn't happen straight away.