12 Months Siezure FREE!!

Whilst talking with my sil at our family get together the other weekend. I came to the realisation that it has been over 12 MONTHS since our little blue eyed devil of an ANGEL has had a Febrile Convulsion / Seizure.. We have had a few close calls in the last 12 months, and if i hadn't of prepared ourselves properly with the right tools would have had more convulsions than none! This also doesn't mean he has grown out of them yet, we still have at least 4 years until that happens... So still a long way to go, but one year down with none is fabulous. Small steps at a time!

I must admit (and I'm sure his grandma's do this as well although wouldn't admit to it, I'm looking at you Granny hehe :)) I do on a daily basis check his temperature, just by rubbing my hands over his face and around his neck and then on his belly. I do it now out of habit. The convulsions can come on so fast, so i wouldn't even be able to tell you how many times a day i do it as i just do it now sub concsiously and when i feel warmth on him, my brain kicks in and i rip his shirt off get him and drink and cool him down. We've got a good routine now!






OK so some more realisations this morning, while looking for a photo here on our computer I've found its been well over a year since I've organised the photo's into their right folders.. That is going to be a fun job NOT!

And i can not remember the last time i read some of my book... I've been slack with that one! I don't start work until 11am this morning so I'm going to park my bum while the boys have a play outside and read some before jetting off to work!

Hope your all having a great week, we are having sunshine in the mornings and dark clouds/sometimes rain the afternoon... Spring is here and summer definitely on its way!

Double Trouble!

Last night was spent jumping between, my bed, Blue eyes and Cowboy! They both have had a minor temp. Cowboys is gone now, don't know what the deal is with him, he hasn't had a temp since he was 2... Blue eyes on the other hand geez!!! He has his second molars still popping through on the bottom so I know his deal! Just wish he wouldn't get the temps with it.. He got to 38C we got him down from there straight away. He woke with it at that temp, so i fixed it fast so it wouldn't jump any higher.

They are both currently asleep on the lounge chair.. I was as well about half hour ago. lol. Trying to catch up on some sleep. I think it was a grand total of about 4 hours, but very broken! We drove Ben to work this morn as it was raining, not very good riding weather! We have a play date today, Don't know if I'm looking forward to it more than the boys. They have a wonderful cubby house with slide and swings, if only i were a kid again! hehe. I think its that the boys will be playing with 2 girls that is putting cowboy off. But once he gets there i know he'll jump right in always does! haha.

Anyway time to go, oh we had a wonderful weekend at the races. Got home at 3 am!!!! Was a great time! Hope you all had a great weekend! :-)

On my mind today.. Yes it's a scary place, run and hide now!

I seem to be thinking of a lot today.. All good things, which is great. Probably because i have a good groove going with doing household chores. And the boys are helping out!

Today I've been thinking about how well we are fairing health wise so far this Autumn. We've had a few late nights out in the cool air, and we've only had a few slight sniffle noses. Ben almost had the flu at the start of the week, but his body seemed to be able to kick it. Which it normally doesn't do so well. And our little blue eyes, has gotten past the 6 month mark without another febrile convulsion! Even after getting his first round of Swine flu vaccination's he didn't even get a temp. We were so proud and very relieved. Fingers crossed winter goes this well health wise, hardly any sickness and hardly and temperatures would go down just nicely with me!

Also on my mind is our wonderful friends. We have alot of them, and they all offer different friendships, advice, activities to enjoy together and most of all love and kindness... nawww how soppy is that!! We love our friends and the time we get the spend with them. We don't get to catch all that often with everyone, of course we'd love to do it more often. But time and sometimes money permitting we don't get to.

I'm also still waiting to hear about the job i had an interview for... That one's right at the top of the list. With noticing how much the boys have grown lately.. Blue eyes has almost kicked his daytime nap, and he's almost getting better of a night. He has most definitely kicked having to drink his milk out of a bottle, he has sippy cups now. And the sentence's he is saying. (Amazing!). Our cowboy is moving on up as well, the big words he uses cracks us up every time. He likes to tell me when he is frustrated... as i tell him when he frustrates me.. (love it!). The stories he comes up with amazes us. The length and detail he gets into is full on.

I mentioned in my last post i packed up pretty much all their toys. Have they noticed. Only once has cowboy asked for a particular toy bin (it has the car's in it) besides that they have not noticed. And are using other games to play and their inventive little minds to come up with activities. Right now as i speak cowboy is pretending to play shopping with me. I'm "the shopping girl" (check out chick). And he is coming up to me and asking for different items, football shirts, food bags.. He has even decided that most things i give him are the wrong colour, shape or size (of course they are all invisible) and he wants to swap them for something else!! It's lots of fun!

Our cowboy wanted to make a cake earlier today, and it had to be strawberry, luckily i have some frozen strawberries in the freezer. Its cooking at the moment. He loved how the mixture tasted and wants to eat the whole cake right now! hehe




Here are the boys ready to pour and mix the cake.



And our fave part licking the beaters!

Hope your all having a great day, I've got a cake to eat!! yum :-)

A Photo and Video Montage of Our Week!

This is what our past week has been like.



Sun shining with white fluffy clouds one moment.



Dark and rainy the next!

So the boys took to playing in the house.



Cooking in the oven!



Mixing their pretend food up before cooking it.



And pulling out all the containers to lay down in the cupboard!!




The video's (hopefully both load for me) are of the boys playing inside. They always seem to have extra energy on rainy days! So in between the catch up on my cleaning we played lots of silly indoor games!



Lets hope the rain clears up properly soon, so we can recover from our (lil boys) snotty noses before winter hits and they're snotty all the time!

In my last post i mentioned Blue eyes temperatures. Well That night Blue eyes hit 39.2c. Which is now his magic number as it was 39C. So we dodged a bullet, Ben came home from work. I thought we were in for a bad night of temps. But he had a decent sleep (in between us, that's why). So i think, if i hadn't of checked him when i did, he would have had a convulsion for sure! Its been 5 months since his last, 2 and a half weeks away from being a year since his first... I'm a little worried. But we will get through these weeks. He can breath better through his snotty nose now, so that doesn't worry me as much...

I need warming up, it's time for another cuppa!

Cake, electricity and snotty noses!

After my cupcake disaster last week, I've been wanting to try again.. This time i decided to bake a cake. But we had no eggs left... And i was really craving a chocolate cake... So i searched the wonderful web and found a recipe* for an egg less chocolate cake. I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out, being egg less and using water instead of milk and not having butter, but oil instead... But OH MY GOODNESS This is a recipe to keep!!! It's so moist and chocolaty.. mmm YUM!!




Chocolate cake! Doesn't it look good??? Of course we all had a piece before i realised that i wanted to take a photo of it first whoops, sorry children come first and this way you can see what the inside looks like!



Yesterday morning Ben organised for us to have a climate smart home service. Our government has recently been organising rebates for things like insulation, solar water heaters and solar panels for houses. They also have a package called the Climate smart home service. It costs $50. A qualified sparky comes out and replaces all your light bulbs with the new energy efficient design bulbs, a new shower head for the shower (water saving shower head) and installs and wireless energy monitor into the electricity box. The sparky came out this morning, (just made it through flood waters to get to us lol).
I love the monitor. It shows you how many kW is being used and how many cents per hour that amount costs. It also has the temperature and records previous days, weeks and months. So we can work out what is using the most power and cut down on its usage.. Brilliant, although when the sparky left we had a play with it turning on everything and testing how much power it uses.... Yes, so we will start saving money maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, once we've used everything at least once or twice on different settings... We also got in the pack a thermometer, with markings of best temperatures for our fridge, freezer, air conditioning, heating etc So i am now testing everything and adjusting to suit... Now this is all in aid of
1. cutting down our power bill and
2. cutting the bill also means less power usage which means less the power companies have to produce..etc, I'm sure you all understand!! It's been in the news enough! lol.




Wireless monitor and thermometer. The sparky put all the bulbs in for us. Except the one in our room, our bed was in the way and he's not allowed to jump on our bed due to rules and regulations etc.. unfair for him! lol

So apart from our new toy, the rain has eased, but the flood waters are still up, our town has moderate flooding, just in the low lying creeks and valleys, local parks. As far as i know, no business have been affected. But some people are still unable to come to town or leave. Our friend stayed another night last night. She is hoping to get home this afternoon. We shall see, Ben went for a drive this morning and its starting to fall but slowly! Our 2 boys also have bad colds. Blue eyes is worse than cowboy. So its only just gone into Autumn and we have snot already!! Blue eye's also had a minor temp this morning, so i am watching that making sure it doesn't spike and result in a febrile convulsion.. I don't mind him having a temp when he is teething, at least he can breath through his nose. Right now his nose is so blocked and runny that it makes me worry just that little bit more.. When i picked up some medicine yesterday at the chemist our friend who works there suggested i put them on a kids multi vitamin to help stop or prevent so many winter colds.. But I will have to look into it more. Try and find the most natural one, and maybe a liquid form... Its investigation time! lol

Well I've now got to go hang some washing and do some more, try and catch up on everything before the next lot of Autumn rain!

* Eggless Chocolate Cake

1 1/2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
4 tablespoons cocoa
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup water
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoons white vinegar
2 tablespoons vanilla extract

Method
1. Combine dry ingredients
2. Combine wet ingredients and stir into flour mixture.
3. Pour mixture into a 20cm round tin and bake at 175-180C for 25-35 minutes.
4. Stand for 10 minutes before turning out. Cake will be delicate while still hot.

Realisation

I have come to the realisation tonight that in 5 and a half weeks, our little baby turns 2! In the last few weeks he has taken a handful of big steps, finally grasping talking and not groaning, screaming and mumbling as much. And deciding he wants to toilet train himself (we are in the midst of this now) It is on his terms though, i just get to clean the mess up. He wants to wear undies so not as wide spread mess as it could be!

Just to think 2 years ago being heavily pregnant with a 2 year old, now being the mother of an almost 2 year old and an almost 4 year old, it baffles me.. We are doing a pretty damn good job! Of course they fight constantly, it is subsiding but hey they are boys, aren't boys suppose to have the worst sibling rivalry?? Simple things like this is what i need to remind myself and Ben with on the days where we are not mummy and daddy but security guards on crowd control!!

Not long after our blues eyes birthday, (I'm pretty sure I've worked it out to be the 9th of April, the week leading up to Easter last year) will be a year since his first febrile convulsion. He has not had any since his mild one last September. He has only had one bout of temperatures since then just before Christmas, so he is going strong now. I did read somewhere in the wonderful world of the web, that the time frame between them does expand as they get older, between the first and second was about 4 and half months. We are now on 5 months since the last. I think somehow i will be walking on eggshells for the next few months! We seem to have a good routine down when he starts to look and feel a little ill.

Enough of that, The other photo's i uploaded are of what our bamboo will look like. I love them! Now its time for bed!! :-)




This is our little blue eyes from our first skiing trip a couple of weeks ago.


This is what our Malay Dwarf Varigated Bamboo will look like.





This is called a Timor Black Bamboo, which i am pretty sure is what my dad gave to Ben.

Busy week

This has been one of the busiest weeks, i have had in the lead up to christmas. First of all, on sunday we went to the beach with some lovely friends of ours, it was a fantastic day. When we then stopped in at another close friends house on our way home for some dinner and all our kids to have a big play. Now to monday, i got a phone call early from Ben at work, telling me he had some bone from a cow shatter in his face with some flicking him in the eye. So once i droppe blue eyes at daycare (cowboy protested daycare so he came with) we took Ben to the Doctors. He was ordered to rest and sleep the rest of the day away.

So on to Tuesday, we dropped the boys at their Granny's to make the doctor visit for Ben easier. The doc had a good look and couldn't find any scratches or holes, so he only had swelling and bruising! YAY! He took the rest of tuesday off aswell, as he eye sight was not completely back to normal.

Now comes Wednesday, blue eyes woke with a temperature.. great. Wednesday is also daycare day, mum was a little hesitant to take him, but we organised for me to call once i had done my shopping to see how he was going. Mum said he was fine, so i went home and and wrapped up all and i mean ALL the presents!! Well the boys are also getting a trampoline so that is not wrapped lol! Wednesday night we went looking at christmas light the boys had a blast! And so did i, i just love christmas lights and decorations.

Now to the last couple of days and nights... Blue eyes' temp has been up and down and he has been cranky and irritable. So i've been on nurse duty checking his temp half hourly and dosing him up on medication so we can avoid a febrile convulsion. That would be one christmas present i would not like to get thankyou santa. Yesterday arvo and last night went pretty good, until the early hours of the morning. he woke very hot, he was 38c. Which normally is not to bad a temp, but for blue eyes, the higher range of normal gets him felling very yucky. Then later this morn he hit his magic number 39c. Now we don't know what temp he will convuls at so this is the number i remember when we were in hospital with him. So i try my hardest not to let him over it. luckily i got him down! He is now not so hot, but still very cranky. The only thing it seems to be from is his teeth again! All other teeth are through so i'm thinking its his molars starting to play around... Just as long has they stop moving by next week...

Anyway we have both family christmas do's this sunday, so the boys will have some distractions and some fun! I hope all your christmas preperations are going well! :-)

More Teeth.

I have discovered Blue eyes has his bottom 2 eye teeth coming through.

So far there are no temps. But alot of grumbling and being sooky.

They seem to be coming alot faster than his previous teeth.

So fingers crossed they come before any temps do.

This comes as we are going away for the weekend...

I know we have everything prepared and know what to do now,

but i really hope he doesn't have a febrile convulsion while we are away.

Would much prefer to be in our home if/when he has another one..

~~

Well I'm off to keep preparing for the weekend.

Which reminds me i should charge the camera batteries again,

just in case!

Hope your all have a great Thursday!

Busy Bumble Bee's

We had another wonderful weekend at home, busy doing lots of little things around the home. Cooking, gardening, playing, pulling down the other gazebo. And one major thing.... We sold our second car. Our lil Suzy has now left us.. We had been talking and thinking about it for awhile, and with a couple of days of Ben mentioning to the fellas at work, he had someone who was really keen to buy it. On Sunday afternoon he came for a look and said yes. We are now going to be able to save some money. Not a great deal, but it's one less rego to worry about, Less on our car insurance payments and a little less fuel (will see how that one goes after using the main car more frequently over the coming weeks). Ben was going to purchase an electric bike. It has a little electric motor on it but if that runs out you can convert back to pedal power. Only catch is they cost a little more than we had thought. So instead we purchased a mountain bike and if need be Ben can buy a conversion kit to convert it to electric as well as pedal!

Tonight will be the first night that Ben is riding his bike home from work... Ben works a 2 week roster. 1 week he starts early, 2nd week he starts at lunch and works until late at night. So the plan is on earlies he will ride to work and i pick him up when he is finished. On lates i will drop him to work and he rides home. If something happens (heavy rain) a work mate may be able to drop him home or i will go pick up or drop off.

The whole 1 car family situation has got me thinking about when i was young. We only had one car. Mum didn't work until my brother and were both attending school, even then she did home day care (still does). I remember going with mum to go pick dad up from work at the local newspaper, either at the office arranging the layout or at the printing press. If it was really late we would have to wait in the car, if it was early we could go in and see dad at work. I can't remember it in great detail i was quite young, but i will never forget the smell of the chemicals wafting around the place. It was so much fun to go and see what my dad was doing all day long ( in my eyes at the time what he was playing with hehe).

This is the only photo i could find of the suzy or zook. You can probably tell by this photo she was put through a lot of things... and proved herself through every one of them!

Late yesterday afternoon after a relaxing but busy weekend we decided to be naughty and get take away for dinner... We hadn't had takeaway in ages so we had been really good. We went and ate it at a park, the wind started to pick up though and the boys didn't get to have a play. So i promised to take them today after daycare. And i did. I thought we were going to get washed out, but no of course the rain didn't come our way :(

This is a playground at our local sporting fields. I love it, big ovals and hardly anyone comes to it!! (and lots of shade!)

Our cheeky cowboy showing off.



Blue eyes trying to work out the spinning drum.

The boys had a blast, they love the slides, Blue eyes walks up to try beat cowboy climbing the ladder. They meet almost at half way have a collision and slide down together, with loads of laughter!

Today Blue eyes had his 18 month needles.... I gave him some nurofen before going to the dr's, so if a temp was brewing it wouldn't be as bad. He was really good, didn't even cry for the needle, very tough boy. I almost cried for mine.. Anyway he went really good, mum said he slept for almost 2 hours, but the good news he feels fine no temp!! I think he wont get one. But to be safe i gave him some more nurofen before bed tonight just in case. I really do not want another febrile convulsion. I know another one is on the cards, but would like it to be quite a while after the last one.. Will see how we go!

I hope you all have a great week :-) xo

Another Reason

Last week i did a post on my cowboy, so this week i thought i would do one on blue eyes. It is also another reason why i wanted to start a blog in the first place.

Talking to granny on the phone!

Blue eyes gets his beautiful eyes from his wonderful granny!


Now to my post. Blue eyes is now 18 months old, and he is cheeky, naughty, funny, smart, a worry, rough, fearless and so many more things!! Now just after his 1st birthday blue eyes got one of his first ever temperatures. Up to this point he had hardly ever been sick. The odd snotty nose and cough but nothing that needed strong medicine for. Unfortunately with this first temp, he had a febrile convulsion. Which means his temp spiked to quickly for his little body to handle which results in the body melting down and convulsing. Both Ben and i were at work at the time. Blue eyes was at daycare (my mum's). My poor mum had to deal with the first one. Thank goodness my dad was home and my brother turned up at the right time.

So far blue eyes has had 3 convulsions. He had a follow up convulsion the day after his first one. Which put us in hospital for the day to find out why he was having them. Children aged between 6 months and 6 yrs are prone to having these, they are more common than what i thought. I had never heard of them before blue eyes. But the doc's at our local hospital new exactly what it was (they were fantastic by the way). Normally a child will have a convulsion before or during a sickness, infection or virus.. But no our blue eyes has to be different.... Very different. As i said earlier he hardly gets a temp. Since having his first convulsion he has had 3 temps, all from teeth, the third temp being his third convulsion. So he only needs a temp from teeth mucking him up to go to meltdown... He does not get sick in any other way after his convulsion, which to me is the scariest part.

After his third one, which was very mild. I took him for a doc visit, just to check everything and make sure he was going well (he was great, running a muck in the waiting room, wouldn't have thought anything had happened to him). There was nothing wrong with him, his temp had settled a little, but there was no virus or infection to worry about.. My doctor told me about looking for blogs to see other families living with children who have chronic convulsions. problem is i can only find blogs of families that have a once off convulsion. I have found a blog which explains in more detail how convulsions work etc, it has alot of info for me to read. Which will be helpful, the more info we have the better prepared we are. So that is Another Reason why i thought a blog about us would be a good idea, so then i am putting more information out there for someone else to find.

Now blue eyes may never have another convulsion, but there is a very very good chance he will. We just don't know... So to better prepare ourselves, i have a little bag that goes everywhere with us, well blue eyes anyway. It has an ear thermometer (best one ever takes temp in a second!) and medicine. The doc suggested to keep suppositories because they work faster than oral medicine, and if he is not feeling well he may throw up the oral... so they are in there as well. 2 different types, one for his age group which is 125 mg and then the age group above him 250 mg or could be 200 mg. I can't remember they are with blue eyes at daycare today lol. And his normal nurofen as it last longer than panadol and has always seemed to work better on him than panadol. We also have a magic number... The temp at which to keep him under. 39c is the magic number, as we didn't take his temp when he had his convulsion (didn't have a good thermometer, but we do now!) this is what i remembered from our last hospital trip when we arrived there. so when he gets sick he has 4 hourly observations. so when it happens again we know exactly what the magic number will be.

As scary as a convulsion is to watch or have happen to you , i think at the age he is at, he doesn't really know what is happening. It is not a nice thing to go through whether being a mum or grandma, as there is nothing you can do, but to have him in the recovery position and wait.. Not a nice thing to have to watch. I would not wish this upon my worst enemy. But we as a family (the whole extended family) have learnt from this and we are all aware of it and have this knowledge to share with our friends.

So blue eyes is watched with a careful eye now, always feeling him checking his temp, both Ben and i have become quite obsessive at checking his temp when he wakes or if he is sleeping longer than normal. And it has affected his night sleep, mainly on our part... We don't want him to over heat too much so most times instead of letting him try get himself back to sleep we just put him in to bed with us, its safer i guess, knowing his temp is good and he is safe between us and we can keep an eye on him. Although he is a horrible sleeper, he gets the tossing and turning from me. He sleeps with his head on me and feet on daddy... This is something we have to try and curve, but i am finding it hard to just let him settle himself, the crying i handle its not knowing how hot he is and if his getting too hot... ahhhh we will work it out. eventually!!

Well that is alot of info about our lil blue eyes, hope you enjoyed and it and learnt something from it. Thanks to my children i am always learning something new, especially how you can love someone so much, and they can't even talk to tell you how much they love you, but they give you a look and you know exactly how they feel, i love it just love it. Hope you have a great day xo



First time on cowboys slide. (Before his haircut!)