Getting Back into Life

After Samara recovered from her stint in hospital, we went up to Kerreigh's place near Kingaroy, for Easter Weekend. With her 6 girls, and 6 of our girls, it certainly was a full house! While we were up there, we took the opportunity to paparazzi-ise the babies again. Here's a couple of the pictures. First we have Samara and Veritee going head-to-head. Which could be something that happens for real as they get older. Next we have Veritee. She has the most amazing blue eyes, which I just had to show off with this picture! I also got one of Samara on Michael's arm. I didn't notice til a couple of days ago, but I had a similar one taken impromptu when Samara was 9 days old, so got rid of all the hospital paraphanalia using photoshop, then made this digital scrapbook of it. I love how it shows how much she's grown(and even more since!!)

The following week, Jason (K's hubby) had to go to Sydney for the week. Kerreigh doesn't like being home on the farm without him there, so the girls and her came and stayed at our place. Now, if we thought we were crowded in her big farm house, you can imagine what it was like in our shoebox! Sara came and slept inside for the week, and gave up her caravan for them. Somehow we got through it all, and even got more pictures of our beautiful babies! I especially like the matching princess dresses I found for them at Trade Secret, down from $70 to $5!

Because Kerreigh lives so far out of town, she doesn't get to do a lot of shopping in the big smoke. So it was a week that was pretty hard on the pocket book! But it was great to get out and about after being cooped up so long with my leg. By this time I was in a moon-boot, and could put minimal weight on my leg. I could also drive, which was a good thing, considering Kerreigh doesn't have a licence! We spent an inordinate amount of time at Trade Secret, Pumpkin Patch and Toys R Us! We also did a lot of op-shopping which was great, and we got quite a few bargains.

That week, we also started Samara on solids. Well, thick liquidy stuff that used to be solid, anyway! She started off with pear, and went at it like a pro! Here is a shot of the 2 babies feasting up a storm.


The only thing is, I can't honestly say this pear was her first solids! On the plane on the way back from New Zealand, Samara was sitting on Renata's lap. Renata, at the time, was eating a semi-melted bar of chocolate. You can see where this is going, can't you? Yep, sure enough, Samara leaned over and took a decent size chomp!! But how can you put in her record books that her first solid food was chocolate at 3.5 months corrected??!! So, for the record's sake, we are sticking with her first solid meal was pear at 5.5 months corrected.


Things went along nicely, until 4 days later when we tried her on apple. Within minutes, her face, head, torso and legs were covered in a nasty rash, and she screamed for the rest of the day. I wasn't sure whether it was an allergic reaction, causing a rash, which left her screaming, or whether she was just screaming about something unrelated, and the screaming caused like a heat rash. So we went back to pear for the next few days and then tried apple again. Same reaction. We figured we weren't going down that road again! WRONG! The next food we tried her on was banana custard. She had the same reaction. I read the ingredients label - who woulda thought? It contained apple! Then we checked out everything else we had. Even half the vegie mixes on the market contain apple!


For now, we are waiting to see a dietician, so for safety's sake (especially since apple is supposed to be low-allergy), we are sticking with pear, and baby rice. She still seems to react to other things though. She had a reaction to something today. Don't know what it was, although she did try putting Bryanna's popcorn in her mouth. Bryanna took it straight back out of her mouth, but now I wonder if corn is a problem too. She also seemed to react to a shirt Michael was wearing the other day. It must have been the powder it was washed in or something (it was a shirt he hasn't worn in months). Every time he held her, the rash came up, then would go down again after an hour or so of him not touching her. So he changed shirts, and the problem went away. I am quite worried about just how much she is allergic to.


Anyway, I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here! Over the next few weeks, leading up to now, we had 2 birthdays. Mahalia turned 10, and Renata turned 16. Mahalia had a combined birthday with the next door neighbour who turned 4. We went down to Suttons Beach. It was a beautiful day - something that didn't happen often on birthdays in NZ! Here she is cutting the Camp Rock birthday cake Renata made for her. Unfortunately I didn't get much in the way of decent pictures, as I was still pretty incapacitated with my broken ankle! I could limp around with crutches but that was about it.

We haven't celebrated Renata's birthday yet. 2 of her friends are down on the Gold Coast at the moment (Lauren from Childers, and Melody from New Zealand). So tomorrow we are heading down there to go to Seaworld with them. Then we are going to an all you can eat restaurant in Brisbane with them for dinner. Melody is staying the night tomorrow night, before flying out to England on Tuesday morning.


Just after Mahalia's birthday, Bryanna was washing dishes one Wednesday night. Michael and Sara had just left for SES (State Emergency Services - they are volunteers, and have meetings on Wed nights), and I was online on the laptop in my room. When Bryanna started absolutely screaming blue murder. To tell the truth, when Bryanna screams, my first thought is spider, or some other creepy crawly. And, this is Australia. There is ample opportunities for screaming here! Well, the screaming seemed to go on and on, and get louder and louder. In fact, it was louder than usual. And if you know Bryanna at all, that's pretty darn loud!!! So I went to investigate. (now, this sounds like it took ages, but it was probably all in the time it's taken for you to read this paragraph this far!) Anyway, Renata had been cooking some potatoes, but had too much water in the pot. Now, bear in mind that Renata has Aspergers Syndrome, and can only really follow one track of thought at a time. So, to her, the logical thing to do, was to tip some of the near boiling water down the sink. Well, Bryanna was using the sink, remember. Anyway, the end result was poor Bryanna ended up with second degree burns all over her hand! Michael raced home from SES and took her up to Redcliffe Hospital. They wanted her to go up to the Children's Hospital int he city (not sure if that's cos they have a burns unit, or because they couldn't handle the screaming!). Well, they had to send her by ambulance as she had been given morphine. So, Bryanna, being Bryanna, proceeded to tell them that the only other time she had been in an ambulance was when she was faking! Well, you should have seen the look of horror on the nurses face! Unfortunately, that nurse was called away, and never heard the whole story (which we made sure the ambos heard!). The story was that, when she was in St John Ambulance Cadets in New Zealand, they were having first aid competitions. She was being an asthma patient and had to act sick! The competitors then had to get her ready and into an ambulance! LOL. Well, the burns looked pretty nasty, but thankfully after a couple of weeks, they started to heal up really well. Now there is a small bit of scarring, and between her fingers looks a bit red, but apart from that, she is all good.


Over the last couple of weeks, as I mentioned the other day, I have started getting into digital scrapbooking. Next time I am on here, I will post some of my pages. For now, I need to sleep so I can make the trip down to the Gold Coast tomorrow. I am a bit concerned about walking around all day though. I still have the crutches, but that's a bit awkward, and I do get sore if I am upright too long.