Let's slow down a little ..

It has been a crazy few weeks to say the least, but, it's now time to slow right down.

We finally moved into our new house, after what felt like a 6 month settlement. The rental property has been cleaned and we are almost finished with business there, Roxiee's birthday and party happened somewhere in between it all, and last but not least, Roxiee's operation day is over and done with.

Early yesterday morning we all took Heath to school and did the normal routine, we went with him to change his library book, waited for him to do his magic words with the teacher and then said goodbye. He was excited as he would be sleeping at his friends house for the night. We weren't due to arrive at the hospital until 10am so we headed to the only place which we knew would be a) open, and b) not smelling like food and further upsetting Roxiee while she was fasting pre-op. Bunnings!

Although i had prepped Roxiee for this op with great honesty, i still felt awful seeing how happy she was walking around Bunnings pushing her trolley and chatting about whatever garbage a 4 year old girl talks about. Inside i was feeling a nervous wreck and I'm sure Gregg was too.

When we arrived at the hospital there was a whole lot of waiting around where we did some drawing and stickers which i had packed in the bag.

It felt like we were here for hours, really it was a little over an hour before we went in. Roxiee was asked to choose my surgical gown, hat and shoes. We tried to make this fun but inside i was a mess, i wanted to pick her up and take her home, not take her into the theatre and watch her go to sleep.

Going to sleep Roxiee was a dream, just like Heath was when he had his tonsils out a few years ago. She didn't fight or scream like the other kids had and for a second i patted myself on the back for prepping her so well so she knew what to expect. I gave her a kiss once she was asleep and went to sit outside the theatre room with Gregg. It took only 20 minutes for them to take her tonsils and adenoids out and in that time i cried all the tears i had stored up over the morning. I know Gregg would never admit to having an emotion, but I'm pretty sure he had a teary too knowing his little girl was in there out of our hands.

The 20 minutes went forever and Gregg and i recalled how upset and disorientated Heath was when he woke from his anaesthetic 2 years ago. The surgeon came out, told us it went very well, that her adenoids were HUGE, and tonsils were large and that they would call us in to recovery in a few minutes when she woke. He reminded us that we would hear her crying, screaming and upset before we were called in, and that it would last up to 20 minutes until she calmed down. We knew the drill, we were prepared. But nothing, they called us in and even said we could both go into recovery which is usually a no-no, only 1 parent is ever allowed in as the kids are so distressed that they want to limit the amount of people in there. Roxiee didn't cry, she didn't whine or scream, she simply woke and went back to sleep in my arms as we were wheeled back to her room.

As we were waiting outside recovery, we noticed that another Mother who was waiting to get her child's tonsils and adenoids out, was 'swapping shifts' with the child's Dad. The Mum had stayed until the child went to sleep, then the Dad came and waited while she was operated on and was there for when she woke up. You could cut the tension between Mum & Dad with a knife. We discovered that Mum was heading back to work as a personal carer. Leaving her child in surgery, so she could go care for other people. This broke my heart. I didn't know this family from a bar of soap, but i already knew that the Mum and Dad were divorced, hated each other and they couldn't even hold it together for their child on the day where she needed it most. There were no kind words between these two and the words they did have weren't even quiet, it was almost as if they WANTED everyone nearby to know about all their dramas.

When we got back to the room Roxiee started to wake and had a few drops of blood come from her nose. This was new to us as although Heath was booked in to have his tonsils and adenoids removed, they didn't end up taking the adenoids as they didn't see the need. The nurses assured us that the blood was normal and explained where the adenoids were, what their job was etc. The blood slowly got worse, we went from using tissues, to paper towel, to face washers, to towels, to having gauze taped to her face. In the middle of all the blood catching we were spilling just as much as we were catching, her poor pyjamas will never be the same.



before the blood came



Gregg and i carried on trying to make Roxiee comfortable, catching her blood, encouraging her to eat/drink etc and trying our hardest to look calm but every so often a new nurse would come in, perhaps it was her first day on the job, but she would walk in, have a look of terror on her face, make a comment like .. "Ohhh

Eventually another nurse who had been there years started her shift and called for the surgeon to come look at the blood loss. This entire time Roxiee was happy as a fat kid with cake. She had a few teary moments but she wasn't hysterical like the other kids we could hear in the ward and when she did get upset she was easily comforted with another cuddle and some reassuring words. The surgeon had a look and said it was likely that we would end up back in theatre getting further surgery to stop the bleeding and we wouldn't be going home anytime soon. This freaked the hell out of us. We had prepped Roxiee for the one op, we had promised her it was all over and aside from the blood she was fine. She wasn't in pain, she wasn't uncomfortable.

While all this was going on, the bed next to us in the room was filled by the little girl who's Mum had headed back to work and was left with her Dad. All we could hear was this poor little girl screaming for her Mummy and the poor Dad trying his hardest to comfort her.

We eventually had to say goodbye to Daddy as he needed to go feed/walk the dogs and Roxiee and i needed to try get some sleep and see if we could get the blood to stop. Around 8pm one of the nurses came in talking on her phone, it was the surgeon calling from home, he wanted to find out how Roxiee, his 'little pest' was doing and if the blood had eased, which it had slightly.

 After a restless nights sleep or lack thereof, she woke properly at 4am, but as soon as she sat up some more blood came dribbling out. The surgeon came in AGAIN as a special visit to see how Roxiee was doing. I showed him the towels which we had caught the blood on since his last visit and he was happy enough for us to take her home provided we know what to do if the blood increases etc.

I was in awe at the surgeons  level of care, as if a phone call from home wasn't enough, he came out of his way to visit Roxiee in the morning when he doesn't usually do any ward rounds on this day. PLUS, within 3 hours of being discharged, the hospital rang to see how she was doing. Amazing.

So as my gorgeous little lady sleeps on the couch after some medicine and a nice bath to clean her up, i sit and blog all my words and emotions out.

Through all this happening and the potential of Roxiee having to go back into theatre, both Gregg and i couldn't help but overhear everything happening with the little girl sharing the room with us. For hours and hours she screamed for her Mummy, and for hours and hours her Dad tried to calm her down and reassure her. "Shhhh, Mummy is coming. Let's try to be quiet so Roxiee can sleep" .. Gregg and i would exchange looks with each other each time the child squealed. I wanted to just go grab her and give her a big fat Mummy hug. And i wanted to hug the Daddy too as he was trying so damned hard. Before we knew it, a family friend turned up to visit the little girl, and Daddy said goodbye as he had 'had enough'. Suddenly this little girl had no Mummy AND no Daddy there, instead she had a friend who had bought along 3 of her own kids. Again she cried for her Mummy and was told she had to be at work and would be there soon. I cried a few tears for this little girl as i hugged my own little girl tight and wiped her blood away. She was breaking my heart so bad. Roxiee was in a much, much worse condition medically and the surgeon had stated that of the 18 kids he did that day, Roxiee was his only concern, but at the end of the day she had both her Mummy and Daddy there dotting on her and making sure she had everything she needed.

The little girls Mum came back around 6pm, she had finished work and had a 'nice shower' .. I'm not normally one to pass judgement, but at this stage, after listening to her child cry for her for hours on end, i wanted to jump up and smack her upside the head, not only for working on the day her child needed her most, but for then taking the luxury of a shower while her child sat with a 'family friend'. The nurse came in to see if the little girl was ready to be discharged, her questions were "has hollie eaten?" .. to which the Mum said "yes, she just ate blagh blagh blagh" .. "when was the last time she vomited?" .. to which the Mum said .. "Has she been vomitting? I'v only just got here, her Dad was with her all day, so i dunno" .. now i put the smack upside the head away and wanted to attack her with a butchers knife. How could she and the Dad have not even got it together enough to have swapped this vital info? Throughout the day i had overheard many phone convos between Mum and Dad, there was yelling and name calling on both ends .. yet nobody thought to ask how the child was doing. Guess it wasn't important in the big scheme of things. At this stage i wanted to just put the child into Roxiees bed and cuddle them both. I don't make any assumptions about this family, they didn't hide anything, their phone conversations were loud and clear, you couldn't ignore it if you tried. It simply broke my heart and i know it affected Gregg too as he asked me what i thought of the Mum not being there.

Anywho, the little girl eventually drank her medicine and went home later that night, after her Mum watched Home & Away, as she said she didn't want to miss it, and she 'wouldn't sleep in a hospy bed for quids' .. i had no choice but to switch off from this little girl and concentrate on my own little girl. I just hope that this was a really bad time for this family and things aren't always like this. I hope that the Mummy and Daddy may realise how badly they handled things and if need be ever again they will handle things different. But i will never know. I do know that as they were packing up the little girl was happy for the first time that day, then the Dad rang and him and Mum started yelling again which set the little girl off crying again ..

My own little girl .. she came home, had some medicine, a nice bath to clean her up, was reunited with her puppy dogs and is STILL asleep on the couch ..

peer group pressure.

I have been pressured into doing another blog. I can understand as I'm sure peoples lives just aren't the same without my blogerific updates. There's so much going on at the moment that it's hard to believe i have nothing to write about, i think my writing mojo is crammed right up the back of my brain somewhere and it's smothered by a trillion other things at the moment. All good things though, so i shouldn't complain.

First things first, tomorrow marks a very special day for us in our Bundy journey, tomorrow we receive the keys to our new house. Our first Bundaberg house. Unfortunately for us, we won't be moving anything in until Friday as the house needs a big clean up. It's not completely filthy, most people would probably walk in and say it was fine, but we would at the very least like to vac, mop and spray a whole lot of disinfectant around. Not to mention that we have a shed full of shit which has been left behind and we will have to do something with that so Gregg has somewhere to put all his tools etc. The outside walls and garage have been jet washed and bleached, some temporary (which will actually be permanent if i know my husband well) fences have gone up to keep the dogs from chewing all the important things in the yard, like the bore hoses, grey water hoses and all the other hoozywatsits which are yet to be identified.

Hoozywatsits .. there are SO many hoozywatsits in this new house. Us 'city folk' are having a bit of a hard time trying to figure out what all this 'country stuff' does but i think we are slowly getting the gist of things. In all our citified life's, Gregg nor i have ever had bore water, tank water, septic tanks and cane toad or kangaroo issues .. in our new countrified house, these things will be daily occurrences for us. We went to explore the gardens of our new house last week and noticed that there was 2 grey tanks, our 2 brains together decided that it was 2 septic tanks, the smaller tank had a hose coming out of it which was slowly dripping, we also observed that the hose was kinked in several spots and thought we would unkink the hose and spread it the length of the yard to see what happens with this very slow drip. Well, needless to say when we layed the hose out free of kinks the very slow drip disappeared and was replaced with a GUSH of darkish, stinkish fluid. Now, it doesn't take a genius to figure that if dark, stinky fluids are gushing from what we assume to be a septic tank and spraying onto ones body, it's fairly safe to say .. "DUDE, YOU JUST GOT SPRAYED WITH ASS JUICE!!" .. thankfully we have some friends who aren't as dumb as us and have assured us that this ass juice spraying septic tank is actually just a grey water tank and nobody was actually sprayed with bodily fluids, instead it was just some manky dishwater which is much less nauseating.

While in the middle of this whole ass juice spraying septic tank dilemma, we also noticed that the toilet had started leaking from the bottom and forming a puddle on the floor around the back of the system. It was assumed that this had something to do with the hose unkinking .. really, what a pack of dumbheads!

Going back a few hours, as we pulled up outside the house, we have an impressive double gate which needs to be opened up to let the cars in, Gregg pulled up and i jumped out to open the gates. After a few minutes of struggling with the gate and cursing at it for not opening more than 30 cms, i started to wonder if the people before us drove around a different way as i remembered seeing their cars in the driveway behind the double gates, but i couldn't for the life of me open them any wider. Gregg after much laughing, suggested i open the gates inwards and work with the hinges instead of against them. Made sense really!

My past blog made reference to the awesomeness of elephants with their trunks up, and i have now started collecting them. I read somewhere today that to be of the best good luck, they should be collected in groups of 8 or 9, so i am aiming for 9 groups of 9 to start with! All up that's 81 elephants for the first group!

The first elephant

Moving right along, the baby!! Thankfully morning sickness seems to have buggered off, i am now left with an extreme tiredness. I've been trying to involve the kids as much as i can, Heath has his days where he couldn't care less about the new addition, and Roxiee has her days where she couldn't care less, and then her days where she is just plain angry! I said to her the other day .. "I'm about to go hang all the baby's washed clothes on the line to dry, would you like to come help me"
Roxiee : "NO! I do not like the baby!" .. people have warned me about the dogs and how i should bring a blanky home from hospital for the dogs to sniff and familiarize themselves with. I'm more worried about leaving Roxiee alone with the baby to be honest!

Roxiee's 4th birthday party came and went, it lasted about a week all up by the time she had her party day, her birthday, her shopping days etc. On the Tuesday morning of her birthday i gave her the option to go to kinder as usual (she only goes on Tuesdays and Fridays) or she could stay home. She choose kinder so i said i would bring cupcakes in for her to have another little party at kinder. I also gave her the option that i could cook her whatever she wanted for dinner, or take her to McDonalds, or Brothers restaurant, White China, Fish n' chips or whatever else she wanted .. "make me lasagna please Mum!" .. we managed to talk her into going out!!

Heathyboy, he's just making me more and more proud everyday. And frustrated, but i won't go into that! .. his teacher asked me to help one morning last week as the kids needed to do their reading folders and she needed to duck down to the office, so i sat and listened to the kids one at a time read out their words from their folders. Of the 15ish children i listened to, Heath was the most confident (probably because he was reading to his Mum and all the other kids were thinking "what's this jackass doing in here?") .. also, their words are measured in numbers of 10's, the majority of the kids i heard read, were onto their 20-30 words and struggling, Heath was onto his 50-60 words, so yes .. yes I'm boasting and yes I'm proud. Very proud.

The dogs, well they have discovered cane toads recently, we have always had them in the yard so I'm not sure why the dogs are only starting to play now but Gregg busted Cougar pawing one the other day. When i went out to investigate he had toad juice all over the top his head. Like, how the hell does THAT happen? Unless of course Cougar was break dancing on top of the toad, which makes perfect sense when you think of an obese staffy x bull arab, break dancing is their exercise of choice. When they aren't sleeping.

So, there we have it, the blog has been updated. With little to none humour as it was a forced blog. I wasn't ready, i wasn't ready man!!! .. after we are settled in the new house and things calm down a bit i will try come back to the trusty blog a bit more, after all it does help clear my head so i can focus better, but for now, I'm off to nap! And pack, and clean.

the boy has started AusKick. Most unco child I've ever seen, but boy i love him!

The new house <3



The most gorgeous little birthday lady that you ever did see!



Roxiee and the famous cake.