(our friends Nicole and Duncan)
The video is obviously just a short taste of the fire works, which went for about half an hour. The first bit is with me filming, the second with Tim. At about 40 seconds you can hear Jaxon and I going “Oh Wow” and then he starts yelling at the fire works…go go go go!!
All of these photo’s were taken with no flash.
Jaxon had his first birthday ever. But he didn’t eat a single bite of my cake.
Dude and Jaxon are the best of friends…for now.
Last Easter Jaxon didn’t get chocolate. This year he got to appreciate it even more.
Jaxon and I went to Darwin to visit his Grandma and Great Grandma.
Jaxon and his Grandma Robyn.
We trialed a great dane from great dane rescue. He was great, all for the tail whipping Jaxon’s face all the time. Hank went to a better home.
Jaxon’s Grandpa Ted and Grandma Anne came to visit twice!
They left their fat chihuahua Spok with us for two months while they travelled.
He made himself right at home.
Jaxon learnt the fine art of scaring the shit out of Mum and Dad.
This time honoured craft, get’s practiced a LOT.
We moved from our old house in to a much nicer house. And lost Oscar.
The new house is much cooler. Spider’s aside.
Jaxon’s great uncle Joe and Aunt Widdy came to visit. They’re expecting their first baby in 2009!
Dad grew a moe.
Jaxon finally had his MRI and CT Scans. He was a little trooper!
We found out Jaxon has 12 bones in his neck. Nothing can be done and despite the fact that people might think this was a bad thing, we feel like it is the best news ever. We are extremely happy with these results.
Grandma Robyn came to stay with us through this time. She got Daddy to come to the pool with us and now he loves it!
Tim left the house on this bike one day.
And returned on this one. I am yet to blog about this, but it’s coming I promise!
Nanny and Poppy “dropped in” on us for Christmas. We had ahh, Christmas in December. It was lovely.
Then we had the real deal.
Jaxon and Dude had their first major run in (under his eye). Now, they’re not so close any more.
And Jaxon got his first taste of fire works!
So I’ve nearly been a blogger now for a full year. When I first started I was blogging about Jaxon’s first birthday cake and the trouble it caused me. Now, not too long from now, I’ll be talking about his second birthday…and where I’ll buy his birthday cake from.
While some years in my life have flown by and I sit and wonder where the time went, this year has been different. This year has taken so long to get through. But now that it’s over, we look forward to next year. Which I am sure will fly by now that we have that enormous weight of not knowing what was going to happen in terms of Jaxon’s neck and arm off our shoulder’s.
This time next year Jaxon will be talking more. I can’t even imagine what that will be like. Just the other day he and I were driving in the car and all he said was “uuuum” and I looked back because he sounded like a competely different child. He sounded all grown up. Next year, it will all have happened for him. Not only will he sound grown up, but he’ll be grown up. I’m not even sure that I am ready for that to happen yet.
Tonight Tim, Jaxon and I are going to see the New Years Eve fire works down by the river. We’re not sure Jaxon is ready but we’ll try. The last time Tim and I went we were just 24 days away from having Jaxon. As we sat there alone watching the display, just Tim and I, I cried. I cried because I was scared. I cried because I knew that this was it. Two thousand and Six would be the last year that Tim and I would be just that. Tim and I. I couldn’t imagine what life was going to be as a “Tim, Jaxon and I” and it scared the hell out of me. I didn’t know if I was ready to be a mother and it was too late. I couldn’t change it.
I wont lie. Being a mother has been hard. I know that some woman adjust to being a mother in the first few weeks of their child’s life but things weren’t like that for a long time with me. I feel guilty about it, but I didn’t love Jaxon for a very long time. I would have done anything to protect him and keep him safe and provide for him, and he still made me smile. But those things do not equal love.
So I am proud to say that the year of 2008 has brought something very special to my life. I finally, and without a single doubt in my mind, love my son. With all of my heart. Not only would I do anything to keep him safe from harm and not only do I want to provide for him the best life possible, but I love him. So much that it hurts to think about him not being around. And I wouldn’t change the “Tim, Jaxon and I” bit for the world.
Perhaps this next year, 2009, will be the year that Tim and I begin to think about adding another Jaxon like creature to our family. Perhaps.
So from my family to yours, I wish you all the best for the year 2009.
On Saturday morning Tim, Jaxon and I went to a local forrest to get some happy snaps with the new Nikon. We didn’t plan it all that well and about an hour in Jaxon decided that he was hungry for more than the snacks that I had packed him so we headed home with plans to go to a different “rain forresty” kind of place the next day.
But when we woke up on Sunday morning it was raining. I can’t tell you how disappointed I was that we couldn’t go on our bush walk. It wasn’t the rain stopping us, but the new camera in the rain stopping us. We don’t have wet gear. We don’t even own raincoats because it rains here over summer so you dry as quick as you get wet.
So this morning when I couldn’t sleep at 4 am I had planned on getting Jaxon up and going for a drive to get some sun rise shots somewhere. But because it had rained the day before and it’s still hot as hell here, the fog was so thick you could barely see three feet in front of you.
I thought about it for an hour or two. On some of our morning drives to Brisbane the fog lifting through the hill’s with the sunrise has been one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. But it really didn’t look like we were going to get a sunrise with the fog, because it was overcast. So we stayed home today.
But come this afternoon I wanted to get out and take photo’s. Of anything. It just so happened a storm was rolling in and we have some of the most awesome storm’s on the planet here.
That could be an exaggeration, but they’re still worth a look in.
I went for a drive out to the towns look-out. Which was closed.
That’s probably a good thing since it’s a metal tower and there was lightening about. I wasn’t alone there. Some other guy was there with his own camera, standing on top of his car doing exactly what I was trying to do. Get storm shots.
It was hot and muggy and I was sweating my ass off. Standing there taking photo’s, I heard the storm rumble in up the street.It was like a steam train thundering by.
One second I was hot and bothered and the next the wind that hit me was freezing cold and the wind was knocking me over. I jumped back in the car and started home, while the other guy stayed right where he was for the mother load of photo’s.
Jaxon has had a big boy bed in his bedroom for about a month now. He hasn’t slept in it yet. It’s simply there for us to read books on and do puzzles on.
Today I decided that he could have his afternoon nap in his big boy bed. I laid him down and he cuddled his beloved duck.
But not 30 seconds after I shut his door there came a faint little knock followed by his cute little “who is it?” so I knew he had got out of his bed.
I decided that unless he was going to kick up a stink in there that I would leave him. I didn’t really care if he spent an hour playing and eventually went to sleep, as long as he got some sleep.
An hour later, after much banging about with toys he hasn’t touched since he was ten months old, Jaxon’s room went silent.
I assumed he’d climbed back up on his bed and gone to sleep. I was right about one bit. He had gone to sleep. But climb up on his comfortable bed to do it? Nope.
When Jaxon woke half an hour later he was incredibly mad at us. And I don’t blame him one bit. He’d slept on the floor next to the door. He had red carpet marks ingrained up one side of his body, including his face!
Next time (I don’t know when that should be) I’ll leave him a pillow and a blanket on the floor…just in case.
This was using no flash and only the lights from the tree.We were trying to do something like this here but ti didn’t really work because Jaxon’s not the sit and pose kind of toddler. Maybe next year.
This is the first video I’ve taken with the d90. (I tell big lies, it’s the 3rd, but the other’s didn’t work and weren’t as cool as this one) This is completely unedited.
In all honesty though, I’ve been feeling a little guilty this year that I haven’t managed to get a single Christmas card out. Not a single one.
I bought them with good intention’s way back in October. You should see them, oh wait…that’s what this post is all about. Well, trust me, they’re really cute. With puppy’s wearing Santa hats. Maybe next year.
It’s not that I haven’t been thinking about you. I really have. It is that time of year after all. But we’ve been really busy and Christmas just kept sneaking up on me. Now it’s the 23rd of December and it’s way too late so I just wont bother.
I hope everyone has a lovely Christmas!
For the past 4 months now I’ve wanted a new camera. Not just any old camera, but a NIKON D90.
That’s a $2000 camera. It’s a Digital SLR camera, and despite the fact that it just broke our bank, it’s a low end DSLR camera.
I’ve sold countless household goods to get the money to get my camera for Christmas. We’ve sold the old TV and the old pool. We’ve sold the bassinet and the old water bed and all sorts of small things that I couldn’t even begin to list them for you.
Tim was beginning to wonder if he didn’t have a “for sale” sign on his back and if he wouldn’t be safer if he hand cuffed himself to the bed so I couldn’t hand him over to his new owner’s while he slept.
Today we went Christmas shopping and got my camera (and a new couch!).There is a HUGE problem with it though. The battery, takes three hours to charge.
So the camera is like this brick sitting on my computer desk that I can look at but can’t really use. I can’t play with it until the battery is ready.
It’s sitting here looking at me, teasing me. Taunting me. I’ve found myself cleaning obsessively. I was so determined not to think about it sitting there on the desk that I nearly scrubbed a hole through the kitchen benches. I’ve lost my husband. He went for a ride to get away from the madness. This blog entry has only taken up five minutes and 22 seconds of my time. I was hoping for more.
Aside from waiting for Jaxon to be born, and of course his MRI and CT date…this might be the longest wait I’ve had to endure for a very long time!
I’ve never been big on video games so when Jaxon was just a few weeks old his Nanny and Poppy bought our household (cough cough, Tim) one of those XBOX things. They probably didn’t know it at the time, but I was really angry about it!
So this visit when they bought us a Wii thingee and a Wii Fit I was a little hesitant about it. I’d heard from all over that it’s heaps of fun. But maybe, just maybe, I thought those people were “geeks” and that me being a non video game playing kind of person would probably still think it sucked.
The main reason I really don’t like video games is that they’re not interactive. While one person plays the other watches and while one has fun the other sits and waits for their turn. Silently wishing that the other player would roll over and die so they didn’t have to share.
But that was 24 hours ago. Right this minute I say, RUN…don’t walk, to the nearest store and get yourself a Wii!!!
OMG the laughter! The fun! The heart rate! At one point I think Tim might have fainted. Right between when he caught his third hula hoop and got hit in the head by a flying shoe. It seriously ranks up there with one of the funniest things I have ever seen. And so much fun!
And as Jaxon is about to demonstrate, it’s interactive. Because not only do I want to beat Tim’s ass to a pulp in ten pin bowling, but I also want to see HIM making a fool out of himself too.
So anyone who doesn’t have one and has never intended to have video games in their home. Take it from someone whose last experience with video games was Atari’s Space Invader’s back in 1983…Wii is the bomb!
Go get one, you wont regret the purchase for a second!
As the days go by I will have more to say about this Wii thing and the In-Law visit. Stay Tuned!!
You guys are lucky! Two blog entries in one day. Well it’s some ridiculous time of the day, like 12.49am on Saturday morning so really it’s not. I’m still up because my in-laws are slaving me away in the kitchen for our early Christmas dinner. I kid you not!
No seriously, I was blog surfing. You know, just having a quick look here and there. You just never know where you’ll end up. But I happened to end up here and here it’s hilarious so you must go and have a look! Gotta love Johnny Depp!!
Then I must go to bed and try to get comfortable with an incredibly painful lower back (one which makes it almost impossible to walk, sit, stand or lay down for longer than five minutes)
Last week Tim managed to pop FOUR ribs out in his back at work. I took full advantage of the cripple in my home. I helped him to get in and out of cars (watch your finger’s), I walked as slow as he needed when we went out (need a wheel chair?) Here’s your dinner (would you like me to cut it up for you?) Are you ok? (there there, there there) and so on. You get the picture. I was milkin it!
He took it all on the chin, telling me to milk it while I could because he would never do that to me. This of course is a lie. If I could just find my rolodex of all such events I’d put them here. But I can’t so you’ll just have to trust me on this one. He’s just as capable of dishing it out when the shoe is on the other foot.
But Karma’s a bitch isn’t it? Because while he was unable to walk and pick things up, I picked up his slack. I did a little more than I should have and when my lower back started to nag at me I just kept on going. Because Tim being hurt for longer means Tim out of work for longer (not that he took ANY time of, stubborn bastard) but you get my point? We can’t afford for him to be off work.
Well guess what? The house hold suffers pretty badly when I’m out of action too. You see where I am going with this don’t you??
Tim has had to do three poo nappies in 24 hours. THREE!
I told you.
The house is falling apart!
In all honesty, he’s been great. Despite the crap I put on him for the last week. He has rubbed deep heat in, he has helped around the house and he has done a lot of the Jaxon stuff that I would normally be doing myself. Now to get him in the kitchen peeling tato’s and roasting roasts!?
Here’s a photo we got tonight out for dinner.
Isn’t he incredibly cute??? I made him you know!?
We took Jaxon to see the reindeer last week while Santa had a coffee.
The only way we could convince him to go and pat them was to tell him they were “just big puppy dogs”
Now you have to wait and see how we got Jaxon to sit on Santa’s lap!
I don’t think I’ve ever put it here on the blog. But Tim’s parents have this annoying habit of just appearing on our door step unannounced.
I know this might not seem so annoying or unusual until you find out that Tim’s parent’s live either a 25 hour drive from us, or a 4 hour flight/three hour drive from us.
It’s not like they’re sitting at the dinner table after dinner and one of them says “hey, let’s go and see the kids tonight”
They literally have to plan these visits out. Poppy needs to get time off of work, Nanny needs to book flights and hire cars. All the while, keeping this HUGE secret from us.
The first time they did it was quite funny. I was working late and Tim and I had not had a smoke for four days. It was coming on a new record for us and I was feeling great about it. But when I walked through the door I could smell smoke and I went off at Tim because he’d given in.
Only to have Poppy and Nanny (who is a smoker) walk out of our bedroom.
Last year they just knocked on our back door. My first words? “Oh fuck me”
This time, last night, they knocked on the front door and I answered it, half naked.
Three weeks ago, while Tim and I returned from Brisbane after Jaxon’s appointment, I casually told Tim that my “in-law-radar” had spiked, and that he should ask them when they’re coming.
It’s not like they’ll tell us they’re coming. I just get him to ask in hope that they’ll slip up and make a mistake.
Poppy tell’s me that is the third time I’ve done it. The third time I’ve said to Tim “they’re on their way” and it’s been on the money.
I told him it’s a feeling I get. That the hair on the back of my neck starts dancing. Sometimes it’s just the weather reminds me of Melbourne and I think “they’re bringing the weather with them”
Sometimes, like this time, it was because I was missing them and needed that little bit of “home” just before a lonely Christmas.
I’m glad they’re here. Even though my first instinct was to tell them to buggar off and come back when the house was clean!
This is a project I have been working on for days. We’ve had the web cam operating for three days now trying to get just 24 hours. But the first night we had it on, the program that sequences the photo’s shut down and didn’t make my movie for me. The second morning the power went out and we didn’t get the sunrise. Then half way through day two Jaxon clicked my mouse and turned the web cam off. It’s taken a lot of work to get all of this put together.
I’ve cut a lot out. Time’s when we’re in the loungeroom or the back yard or the back of the house have been cut out because nothing is happening. The sunrise went for a lot longer and there was a bigger gap between when Tim left for work and I get up. This would have been about 20 minutes worth if I hadn’t.
I hope you enjoy it. This is approximately 20,000 photo’s. The web cam took a shot every three seconds.
Here are some things you might want to look out for.
Other things you didn’t get to see.
We just got sent the disc with all of Jaxon’s MRI and CT scan’s on them. I’ve spent hours and hours sorting through them (401 images) so that they’re in order so you had better watch it and you had better like it!!
A lot of people are saying that they don’t really know what they’re looking at. The reality is that Tim and I don’t really know what we’re looking at but we do know what we’re meant to be looking at. I’ll try to explain it with still shots of what you’re looking at.
These one’s here are the MRI. They have taken a body shot of Jaxon every 2mm’s from his back right to his front. Through these one’s you get to see his lungs, his brain, his muscles and most of his organs.
Through these one’s they have taken a body slice shot from his head right down to his waist every 2mm. You get to see through his head and then in to his neck. The circle on the bottom is through the center of his spine. There are two categories here, the other has the white line along the bottom. On those one’s I assume that they’re looking at the nerves running through the spine to see where and how Jaxon’s arm is damaged and if the neck is in danger of pinching nerves or paralyzing him. You see as they move down through his chest where you see his lungs which are black with white veins running through them. Another thing that was noted the other day was that his right lung is much smaller than his left, you can clearly see his lungs in these. You see the kidney’s and if you’re clued in on them you see his intestines.
These one’s here is Jaxon being built from his left side to his right side. You see it starts at his arm where you only get to see his shoulder. Then it moves through his arm and in to his chest. In the shot above you can see his lungs and the start of the bone structure of his spine.
These one’s are the CT scan. They show bones and cartilage. I think everyone gets these. These show why Jaxon’s neck is on an angle and also why nothing can really be done about it. When it comes down to it these is just one mass of bone that it is one way or another connected to another.
This one here shows clearly how his right side is underdeveloped. I think it’s his shoulder bone, that you can see is much smaller and shorter on one said than it is on the other.
There are also two lot’s of photo’s where a white halo is moving away or in to the photo. If you look closely, you’ll see that it’s the oxygen tube down his throat having it’s photo taken. Or, Jaxon was blowing bubbles.
I’ve been looking for a swim vest that is suitable for Jaxon. The problem is there is only one supplier that really has what we need (as recommended by the physio as being best for his arm development)
So the vest’s that I’ve been looking at come in small, medium and large. Small caters for 15-25 kilo’s. Medium also happens to cater for 15-25 kilo’s. Then large caters for 25 to 50 kilo’s.
At 22 months of age, Jaxon weighs 8.6 kilo’s (18.5′ish pound)
He’s going to be 20 years old and a capable swimmer before he can fit in to any of those!!!
Tim: This toy is for ages three years and under, it’s inappropriate for Jaxon.
Me: Darling, you and I are probably inappropriate for ages three and under. Whats your point?
Tim: Jaxon! Look what Mummy and Daddy got you!
I just remembered that I hadn’t put Jaxon’s MRI and Cat Scan results here yet. I don’t know if I can go through and write it all again, since I told the girls on the boards the day we found out. So I’m just going to copy and paste it all here with a couple of modifications.
1) They are NOT going to do anything and they don’t think they will ever be able to do anything. No surgery.
2) That means that Jaxon will always have his head on an angle like that.
3) The arm is not nerve damage from pinched nerves in the neck. It IS a brachial plexus as they first said. It happened during the c-section and is quite common with breech births. He may never have full movement in that arm but the good thing is he wont know any different.
4) He doesn’t HAVE a deltoid muscle. Or he does, but it’s almost dead and gone due to non use. That’s the one that runs over your shoulder and down the back of his right arm.
5) All of the bones in his right shoulder are under developed. We could see huge gaps on that side because they’re basically shrunk. I actually thought he was missing his clavicle it is that small, it is a LOT smaller than his left one. If we don’t keep up with encouraging him to use that arm the other muscles will shrink or die too. But the deltoid is a bit of a lost cause.
He may never have full function in his arm either. He can’t lift it above his head and he can’t hold his hand out to take something (palm facing up) but we know now so we can work around it to help it. Also thinking now that we know it’s a brachial plexus I will call the chiro and see what he thinks and if he could see him now he knows exactly what is in there. Maybe they can help because they did last time.
Now to what’s actually IN his neck. Get this. He’s meant to have 7 bones in his neck.
He has 12 or more bone’s in his neck.
Its just TOO hard to see and count them. Even with the every 2mm body shots you just couldn’t count them all. It’s like a big puzzle in there. They look like pebbles spread through out his neck and they bulge in the center as well. Like a boab tree does. Seriously, it looked like a really old style cobble stone road in there. None of them are connected, none of them are even slightly “vertebrae” shaped or the same size and shape. None of them are in line. Some are behind other’s, some are off to the side. Some are sitting right on top of another one. I can not describe to you what it looked like. I am going to have to find a picture that best describes it because they didn’t have a printer. Just imagine though that the 7 bones that a normal person has in their neck and then that in his neck they got shattered by blunt force and just scattered all over the place. The more I think about it the more amazing it seems to me that his neck actually has support, since there seems to be no solid structure from his back up to the base of his head.
Then, why did this happen. For a couple weeks I’ve been wondering if this was my fault. Something I did during pregnancy. Then Mum and Tim both managed to talk me out of thinking that. But when I asked the doctor “What caused this” he said “What were YOU doing in your seventh week?” (not what was your Husband/best friend/dog doing…what was *I* doing) So, week seven. Major cramping and a 2am ER visit. An ER visit where the nurse on duty called the doctor and they prescribed me with ibruprofin for the pain, even though they knew I was pregnant. The very next day I went to my regular doctor and SHE told me that I had to stop taking it immediately because it was bad for the babies development. Turns out she was right and I only ever took one of those tablets. We suspect that that was the cause although we have no proof. Our cat also died around that time too and Tim said I am more than welcome to blame it on one of his special two headed sperms.
His foot is PERFECT!! He has no signs of lapsing back. We still go back now whenever we’re in town, but Wendy was all thumbs up about his foot. She also told us that Jaxon’s neck case had made it in to medical journal’s and was sent to doctor’s all over the world because it’s like a 1 in a 50,000 occurrence. Very rare.
I guess now we just have to wait and see what school is like for Jaxon. Maybe he’ll get teased. Maybe he wont be able to participate in all school sports and that sort of thing, even though we think he’ll be academically minded.
Oh, nearly forgot. If they are going to do something, and that is almost impossible at this stage unless technology changes over night, it wont be until he’s stopped growing so we’re looking years and years down the track. By then, maybe Jaxon can decide if he’s ok about it the way it is and we wont even bother. We do go back every six months to be monitored for a year and then probably once a year until they decide it’s time to decide. But now we really don’t need to worry at all!!
Overall, we’re very happy with today’s results. Regardless of the number of bones he has. We’ll tell Jaxon he’s above average with more bones than the “average human” he he
That’s what I wrote for my girls. And I’d like to share what one of their replies was.
Boo- I only read your original post and shot up here to reply… but I will go back and read everyone’s comments in a sec. I just had to jump ahead of myself and tell you how HAPPY I am for YOU. Maybe that sounds weird, but let me clarify.
This is NOT the same Boo I met on these boards. You’ve been through so many trials and roller coaster emotions- through pregnancy, c-section, doctors, crying, being gone for a spell, etc. I just want you to know how proud of you I am. The Boo who posted today is so optimistic and so proud of her PERFECTLY created son. You have grown so much as a mother and I am blessed to have seen you transform into this beautiful wonderful person who any little boy would be blessed to have the honor of calling you Mum. Jaxon is an amazing little man with an amazing momma!
I’m so elated you got answers and that they are all manageable issues you are now prepared to deal with.
Muuuahhh!!!
Thank you Angela.
Last year, at about this time, Tim and I took Jaxon to see Santa in our local shopping center. We did everything the photographer told us to do. We walked in with Jaxon facing backwards and gently placed Jaxon in Santa’s lap.
Everything was going fine for all of 2.5 seconds, when, ever so slightly, Santa shifted his foot and Jaxon saw it. That was the moment when Jaxon figured out that this wasn’t just a big fat ass teddy bear we were placing him with. This was some kind of monster we were going to feed him to.
I thought maybe this year would be better. A year has gone by, Jaxon is older and much more mature (cough cough) and I would really like a photo of him on Santa’s lap for all of his grandparents.
Today we returned. I didn’t get two feet from Santa before Jaxon clung to my neck and waist like I was about to throw him to the lions. He screamed in my ear and no lolly pop from Santa was going to fool him.
So maybe next year will be “third times a charm”? I can only hope, I am so envious of all the girls on the boards with smiley happy babies, um, toddler’s, on Santa’s lap.
I have been trying to write about this for a while but it’s sort of just become a non issue now that the day has been and gone. So I’ll just write about it quickly. I think I can do that!?
We stayed in a hotel because we had a 7am check in with a 7 hour fast. We thought it would be better but we were very very wrong. We really should have known because Jaxon wont sleep anywhere but his cot. So that’s exactly what he did. Or didn’t do. He finally gave up the ghost at 2am. The hotel was hot and it was a raining muggy night with air conditioning that barely worked. So we had a window open and at 3.30am a very loud and obnoxious bird woke Jaxon up again. That was the end of any hope of sleep we had. We left for the hospital early and decided to kill some time in peak hour traffic. Joy.
I can not praise the hospital enough for the day that we had. We really thought it was going to be awful for Jaxon but they had a great big play room with ride in cars and home corner’s and play stations. For the 20 minutes that we waited Jaxon test drove each and every one of the 7 little cars they had.
For me I think the worst thing was having to sign a form that said “I “the parent” am aware of all of the risks involved with this procedure” You know, like your child might die in the next two hours because of what we’re doing but since you signed this form, we got our asses covered. I’ve had to sign that same form I think 6 times now. It’s just a form, but it’s not just a form if you know what I mean?
The nurses were wonderful. But I don’t think either of them appreciated that when asked if Jaxon had any metal objects on his clothes that we both said “no, but we need to remove his penis ring” They just didn’t get it. But we just had to be making light of it all really or we would have gone mad!
Then came the hardest bit. I had to accompany Jaxon in to the MRI machine. We laid him down on the HUGE adult sized table with his head on a big plastic O ring and they put a teeny tiny gas mask over his mouth. Man. He was screaming at me and pleading with me. Mum, you’re meant to keep me safe is the look in a child’s eyes when something like that is being forced upon them. And he’s right. And that’s all I wanted to do. But the logical section of my brain made me hold his arms and legs down so he couldn’t rip the mask off. The logical part of my brain said it had to be done. Even though deep inside all I wanted to do was grab Jaxon and run. His eyes glazed over and his screams turned in to murmur’s as his eyes (intently looking to me for help) glazed over. Then he went limp and his eyes closed.
Have you ever put a dog to sleep?? That’s what kept running through my head as I left my silent son laying on a table with people who had made me sign his life away to them.That is the best way to describe to you what it’s like to “put your son to sleep” Even when I left the room and saw my Mum and Tim sitting there, the sympathy in their eyes for me having to do that was exactly the same as if I had just left the room at the vets without my long time family pet.
I stayed cool, calm and collected for all of two seconds once I’d left the room. I fell to pieces in Tims arms. I thought I had it all under control right up until I saw Tim and then I lost it. Nothing a bottle of coke and a great big chunk of vanilla slice wont fix.
The wait was 2.5 hours but it didn’t really seem that long. I think the hardest thing about all of this has been the actual wait. Once it was all starting to happen and once we knew we were one step closer to finding out some real answer’s (which we got today, will post later) we just felt relief.
So they came and got us and took us to the recovery room. Jaxon was snug as a bug in a rug laying on a bed with his little heart monitor going. He was still out like a light and looked ever so precious and fragile so the nurses spoke to us for a little. One was a student nurse and she was getting told (get this!) that I was a “darling mother” because she’d told me not to touch him or pick him up and I didn’t. A lot of mother’s just rush in and ignore what the nurses say even though they say it because doing that scares the child when they wake up.
When he finally woke up he snuggled in my arms, he drank 200 mil of milk (he normally has 20 mil, he was HUNGRY!) and a tub of pears and something else which has just totally slipped my mind (a bottle of apple juice). Let’s just say he ate like a normal 22 month old would eat on a normal day in a single sitting! Except that meant he ate four times what he would normally eat!
So we went home and Jaxon doesn’t remember a single thing. He’s never going to remember these things which is a real blessing. The fast was easy, but having him look in my eyes for me to protect him was really hard, because that’s exactly what mother’s do and thats exactly what I wanted to do. So I am very glad that in 10 years he wont know this happened. He doesn’t even know it happened now.
These photo’s are. 1 and 2 are him in the recovery room. That little red mask is the gas mask. And then the one in my arms is when he just woke up and I got to hold him. You can sort of see the blue bandage that is holding his drip in his arm. The nurse was kind of funny. She said to me when he woke up “If you’re strong enough you can cuddle him back to his room” and I was thinking “Lady, I could hold him for a week if I had to”
We got the results today so I will post them here tomorrow.
I wish I had a tripod, because I couldn’t keep the camera still to take the photo’s. I don’t know if this was just Australia or if other parts of the world will get to see it tonight. The moon, Jupiter and Venus all lined up to make a smiley face in the sky. I thought Tim was pulling my leg when he told me it was going to happen but sure enough when we came out of the pool there it was smiling down at us.
Ahh. It is just Australia. Here’s what I found.
THE world may be facing its worst economic turmoil in decades, but the heavens are about to smile on Australia.
A rare cosmic alignment tonight will produce a smiling face – or an emoticon, depending on your generation – high over the country.
I don’t know if it’s worldwide or just Australia wide, but for the last 30 days it’s been “Movember”
The month where men all over the place don’t shave for a full month to raise money for prostate cancer research.
I’ll admit, it’s a good cause. But I hate facial hair on my husband. Not for any other reason than when I kiss him I feel like I might be kissing my Dad. A man whom I have never ever seen without a beard.
So when Tim gave me a peck on the lips it was all good. But when he went in for the kill, and stuck the tongue in and all I saw was my Dad…that’s a mood killer right there.
The real issue is, that I LOVE the mo on Tim. I think it really suits him. For the sake of our sex life, and my sanity…that mo’s gotta go!
The Mug Shot.
If Tim were to write the story he’d probably have you all believing that this was some how my fault. But I assure you…well, let’s just leave it at that. I like my marriage just the way it is.
So here’s what happened. It was the night before Jaxon’s MRI and we’d just past the hotel we were meant to be staying in. It wasn’t peak hour traffic. But when you’re a laid back country driver and you’re just a little bit stressed out in the middle of city traffic, it’s not always pretty.
So it was dark and the lights were bright and destracting. Not forgetting the adult entertainment shops on every corner (hey, we have one sex toy shop in town, and we wont go because everyone knows everyone!)
When I said, “just go right here” Tim took that in a very literal kind of way. He did exactly what I said, instead of what I meant (ie: at the next LEGAL right turn).
He turned right. Right down a one way street. Going the wrong way.
Let me tell you how scary that was. It was at the bottom of a hill and at the time there was no oncoming cars because they were stopped at the red light just over the crest of that hill. On either side of us we were blocked in by high rise cheap hotels. At any moment, those lights were going to come over that hill and we were goners.
Seriously people. If you’d been there I don’t think you would have blamed any of us for shitting our pants. Which I didn’t, in case you’re wondering.
So we got safely to the top of the hill just as the red light changed to green. I’m not sure how I know all of this since I had my hands across my eyes and I was praying.
Tim cut across traffic as it started to move. I could literally hear all of those city driver’s cursing about us country folk who don’t know how to drive.
We came to a set of lights and luckily it changed to red, so that Tim and I could finally stop and breath. Through the “I can’t believe you just did thats” and the “You said TURN RIGHTS” I saw a bus come flying around the same corner we had just cut. If that bus had come three minutes earlier we most definitely would not be here to tell the story. And I would have shit my pants.Â
Dude wont go out all day. He will go to the door like he wants to go out fifteen times but then cowers away like some huge dog is waiting just outside to eat him up.
But come night time, when I feel obligated to let him out because he’s been cooped up all day, he wont come back for hours at a time.
Last night, we figured out why. There are hundreds of frogs out there!
If you’ve never had a Pavlova, then you just don’t know what you’re missing out on. These photo’s just don’t do it justice. Especially since our camera always washes Jaxon out because he’s got pale skin and the instruction booklet we have to fix it is written in 4 different languages, bar English.
The Pavlova is my signature dish. If I have people over for dinner, which I often do, I treat them to a home made pavlova. There is nothing better, let me tell you.
Those cheap and nasty microwavable “egg” one’s will never give you the thick and chewy bottom, the melt in your mouth center or the to die for crunchy and fluffy outer shell like mine will.
We had friends over for dinner on Sunday night. Jaxon got to lick the bowl, so to speak.
This last photo is Jaxon getting to eat the finished product for the first time. I think he may be a fan. I don’t have a photo of the finished product. So it saddens me to say I’ll have to make another one so I can show you. Mine look nothing like the fruit covered ones!
I was looking back over the pages of this site and found I had almost NO photo’s of Mexxi.
We named her Mexxican (had to be different) because when we moved from Melbourne to Queensland, everyone here called us Mexicans (from South of the Border)
Mexxi was my birthday present back in 2005.
She weighs 1 kilo, or 2 pound.
At one point we had the largest and the smallest dog in town!
When you find out something is wrong with your son the day after they’re born and then get told nothing can be done for quite some time, the waiting becomes a part of your life. You just don’t notice it.
But one week from today (despite the fact that this will be posted ON the day) Jaxon will be having his MRI and CT Scan. It’s a wait that’s more than 8 months in the making, or 22 months, if you count that we’ve known since he was born. For 8 months we’ve been quite comfortable being able to say “on the 25th of November” and know that it’s not next month, it’s not next week and it’s not even this week. It was some place off in the future that we really didn’t have to think about.
Even though I’ve known about this for a very long time, it snuck up on me. It IS next week.
Even though I’ve had to make all of the call’s to make sure appointment’s are at the right time and finding out all of the information about what to do on the day, it hit me today that it’s just around the corner and the wait is almost over. So I was a little surprised when that in itself presented me with a different sort of wait. The Worried Wait, as opposed to the “Plenty of time to worry later Wait”
I’m trying to just not think about it. It is just an anaesthetic so they can do the MRI and the CT Scan. But still, there are still risks involved. And let’s not forget the 7 hour fast that Tim and I have to force Jaxon in to. Really, thats what I am more concerned about. I think once they actually put him under, I’ll be relieved that I no longer have to fight a hungry and likely tired toddler to keep him quite, happy and occupied. Thank goodness my Mum is coming to stay with us for a week or two!
Keep us in your thoughts today!
Someone on the boards once pulled me up about how great the Wiggles were and did I have plans to take my children to see them? At the time I was pregnant, no children. I told her that I HATE THE DAMN WIGGLES and she couldn’t understand.
Well, the Wiggles have been here in Australia for a lot longer than they have been worldwide. When they first formed, I was 13 years old. That was eighteen years ago! At that age the Wiggles were SO NOT COOL!
But I’ve since changed my mind. Jaxon’s Nanny and Poppy bought him BIG RED CAR on DVD when he was very young. You know, like three months old. I played it once or twice and he didn’t take an interest so I stopped and never went back to it.
That is, until I found that the Wiggles keep Jaxon occupied while I do house work. About 5 weeks ago I put them on and all of a sudden Jaxon was quiet. He sat still. HEAVEN!
The only problem now is that I know ALL of the Wiggles songs. I can sing in Spanish too. Tim call’s me a Wiggle’s Mum. He once asked me who my favorite Wiggle was and I asked him to guess. Through a process of elimination that I wont go in to here, he deducted that Anthony was my favorite Wiggle. He was right, although I have a few bone’s to pick with him too. He then started calling me a “MILF with a WILF” Translation, Mother I’d Like to Fuck with a Wiggle I’d like to Fuck.
It’s not exactly an accurate description, but Wiggles fan, I am. If the Wiggles came close enough to my town, I would SO take Jaxon to see them!
Here are some facts you may not know about The Wiggles.
Anthony and Jeff started out in a band called The Cockroaches. They were quite successful here. In 1991, after they had broken up, Anthony called Jeff and asked him if he’d help him with a small project he was working on. Jeff said, “Sure, how long will it take”
The old yellow Wiggle, Greg, is better than the new Wiggle. He quit because he suffers from orthostatic intolerance. It means his heart doesn’t pump enough blood to his brain and he faints.
Sam Moran, the new yellow Wiggle, was his understudy and had been filling in for him for over three years before he quit. He’d done more than 300 live shows and can also be spotted in all of the old DVD’s as a Wiggly Dancer…all be it, gay Wiggly Dancer.
Sam, is married to Lynn Moran. Lynn used to be Dorothy the Dinosaur but is now a Wiggly Dancer.
Then, here’s the stuff that blew me away. Anthony is 45 years old. Murray (and you don’t want to know what we call him) is 44 years old. Sam is the same age as me. He’s 31 years old. And last but not least, Jeff (whose surname is Fatt) is FIFTY FIVE YEARS OLD!
The Wiggles recently topped BRW’s list of the richest home-grown entertainers, beating Hollywood-based actors Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe. The quartet of children’s entertainers took in $45 million for 2007-08, putting them ahead of Australia’s most famous actors and singers, according to BRW’s Top 50 Entertainers, an annual entertainers’ rich list.
SO there you have it. The Wiggly Low Down. Jaxon’s in to them. I’m in to them, and yes, Tim is in to them too. He can sing in Spanish too. Jaxon doesn’t dance or get excited about them, but you know, I think if he went to a concert he’d 1) laugh at all the kids dancing to the Wiggles and 2) go back stage to figure out what button’s did what.
Say “ahhhhhhhhhhh”
This is me in grade prep. Five years old. Wearing of all things, a sailor suit. I think that might have even been my choice.
My teacher’s name was Ms. Reddin. Can you tell?? She was the best teacher and the one who discovered my dyslexia (hey I spelt it right!). She had the smallest hands in the world.
And of course, Tasha. I think we’d been best friends for two or three years there. She’s not as dorky as me, and it’s the same now. I always was the dorky kind.
I’m a strong believer in the everything happens for a reason theory. I think everyone who knows me knows that.
In the last few months I think I’ve lost myself. I don’t know who I am. I know I am Jaxon’s mother, Tim’s wife, Mum and Dad’s daughter. Terry’s sister. But I don’t know what I want from my life any more. I don’t have direction.
I feel like I am just plodding along. I get up each day, do what I have to do before I get to go to sleep again. When I was in high school, I got up each morning KNOWING that I wanted to do well in school because I wanted to work with animals. I knew I wanted to one day get married and have a happy and well connected family.
Now I get up and I am married and I do have a family, but I don’t know what I want to do when this part of my life moves on, or Jaxon goes to school. I can’t stand in front of the mirror and say “this is who I am” because I don’t know who I am any more. I feel like I’ve lost who I am in the mother/housewife role. I feel like those two things are all that makes me ME. Like outside of those two things, I feel like I have nothing to bring to the table.
I’ve been up and down and moody for weeks now, trying to change certain things that I thought might be the issue. But now I know that the issue was less to do with the house I live in and the relationships I have with my family, and more to do with how I am feeling about myself on the inside.
I think I need help to find what it is I am looking for. Maybe a life coach.
Don’t laugh.
Step one for me has been stepping up and saying that I am depressed about something. Eight years ago I would have let it get to a point where I was ready to kill myself (in a literal kind of way) before admitting that I was not in control and needed help and direction. Thats what landed me in hospital last year, pretending that I was ok.
Step two will be finding exactly what it is that I need to get me on my way. Normally, when we put Jaxon down for a nap, we go for a nap too. Tim asked me half an hour ago if I would be joining him. I said “I want to grab something to eat first”
It’s that that happened for a reason. Stupid as it may sound.
If I had just said yes, and gone and laid down then I wouldn’t have turned on the TV while I had my lunch. I wouldn’t have sat down at the very start of a show called “You can Change Your Life”
See. Just the title, for the frame of mind that I am in right now, is perfect.
The first thing it said was that people get stuck in the “I can’t” frame of mind. And how true is that for me? How I think I know what I want to do with my career but keep telling myself I can’t instead of I can. How I keep saying it’s too hard to get there because right now we can’t afford it. How I never try because I might fail. Maybe it’s not going to be that hard if I’d just suck up my courage and take that first step.
Maybe I am in my own way. Maybe I am stopping myself from taking that first step in to the unknown. And if I hadn’t stopped to have lunch and broken the routine, I might have been waking up tomorrow still wondering what exactly is going on in my life that makes me feel so lost and worthless.
Ahhhhhh, he’s just too cute sometimes. Sometimes I think I might explode with pride when he does stuff like this.
I look at him now as he does something new. I watch him and it makes me go “wow, I made that†I made a HUMAN being. Gone are the days where Jaxon sits quietly in the corner sleeping, waking only for a feed, a shit and a goo-gah. Now there’s just no stopping him.
Not too long ago I was the child. My mother was the adult and I looked up to her for everything. From helping with homework, doing my housework, cooking…doing everything for me. And now it’s me. Now Jaxon looks to me. Now he shoves things in my face because he needs my help.
On a daily basis, it still blows my mind the way the world works. The way life works. This is my son, and 23 months ago, he wasn’t breathing. Almost three years ago he plain old didn’t exist. And here he is, living, breathing and taking it all in right in front of my eyes.
I’m bumping this post up, because the time is getting close for us to find out exactly what is going on.
Originally Posted on the 24 April, 2008 at 10:59 am
On the advice from a very good friend in America, we’ve taken Jaxon to a chiropractor to try and sort out his arm and neck problems.
Our first appointment was on Tuesday. It was THE BEST. For the first time ever, someone sat and watched Jaxon play to see what he was and wasn’t doing with his arm, instead of asking me to explain it. I LOVED this. It’s so annoying to have someone ask something about Jaxon, when just a few minutes of their time and a few toys will show them what is going on. I was very impressed.
Anyway, he wanted to get x-rays done to see what is going on. They normally don’t do x-rays on such young children. But not many kids go to them with bent necks and dysfunctional arms. He needed to know what was actually wrong before he went ahead and tried to treat it.
We got the x-rays done that day and went back today to see what they could do for Jaxon. The very last thing I expected was to be told that Jaxon only has half of his cervical vertebrae C5.
THAT is why his neck is on a tilt, it has next to nothing to do with his torticollis (although that does still exist) He explained that the torticollis is what prevents Jaxon from turning all the way right, while the missing chunk of his vertebrae is the cause for the tilt.
We don’t know what this means. We don’t know if this means surgery. We don’t know if this means that Jaxon will live with his head the way it is for the rest of his life.
Now we have to get another appointment with the paediatrician and see what HE thinks. But being that this is in his neck, or more specifically, his spine…I can NOT see a single person who would be willing to go in and try to fix it. I’m not sure I would even want someone to fix it because the chance of something going wrong would far outweigh the choice to let Jaxon live with such a small thing.
Not that I think this is small. Don’t get me wrong. I spent a good part of my one hour trip home crying. I was not expecting to hear anything like this. In fact, I was so confident that the chiropractor would be able to work his magic on Jaxon for the next year or so and have everything under control. Before he saw the x-rays I think HE thought that as well. So I am of course upset.
Here are Jaxon’s x-rays. It was very difficult to get these done. Daddy had to hold him from the front while another nurse had to support him from the back. This was the “findings†that the x-ray man reported to the chiro. He did not pick up on the missing C5.
Posterior fusions of the cervical vertebrae and loss of disc height. Scoliosis (convex to the left side in both) the cervical and thoracic regions of the spine.
The chiropractor then wrote in his very messy doctor like writing, congenital aplasia of C5- hemivertebra
If you can make heads of tails of any of that, please leave a comment! Somewhere in that yellow circle is the missing vertebrae (or part of)
I just have to keep reminding myself that Jaxon will be ok with this. It’s not like he wont be able to walk or talk or be the smartest boy in school. He may or may not get teased, something I don’t wish on any child. But he WILL be ok even if that happens.
Edited to add, since this we have found out that there are possibly two hemi vertebrae and that he has 3-4 fused vertebrae on the right side of his neck, and the same again down the back. I am really looking forward to knowing EXACTLY what is going on in there, and more importantly, what can be done about it. We wont find out the WHAT bit until the 3rd of December, but the spinal surgeon has already told us they have to do something and it can’t be left.
This is what our BOM said about our area tonight.
SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING
For DAMAGING WIND and LARGE HAILSTONES
For people in the Maranoa and Warrego, Darling Downs and Granite Belt and parts of the Central Highlands and Coalfields, Central West, Channel Country and Southeast Coast Forecast Districts.
Issued at 4:16 PM Wednesday, 19 November 2008
This is what we captured. I would have got some photo’s of some very impressive hail if it hadn’t been so dangerous to go out.
These two photo’s don’t show the bolts, just the sky lit up.
Stomping through the puddles in our flooded front yard
And yet we still have this to come.
TOP PRIORITY FOR IMMEDIATE BROADCAST
SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING
for DAMAGING WIND and FLASH FLOODING
For people in the Capricornia, Wide Bay and Burnett, Southeast Coast and parts of the Central Highlands and Coalfields and Darling Downs and Granite Belt Forecast Districts.
Issued at 9:27 pm Wednesday, 19 November 2008.
Severe thunderstorms are likely to produce damaging winds, very heavy rainfall and flash flooding in the warning area over the next several hours. Locations which may be affected include insert MY TOWN HERE, Gold Coast, Toowoomba, Brisbane, Dalby, Gympie, Gladstone, Rockhampton and Kingaroy.
If they’re predicting floods it’s not for the amount of rain we’ve had (so far about 65 mil in three hours) it will be the rain coming down from the hill’s. Tomorrow is going to be a very sticky and muggy and yukky non washing day for me.
But for now, I’m going to sleep, in my NEW bed!!!
And before you get all up in arms about Jaxon being out in the rain and lightening, it’s HOT and MUGGY and he loved it. I remember being a child. I’m letting him experience it all, despite the 300+ hits of lightening we had in an hour! He also had a nice long hot bath afterwards. I remember loving those too.
Today will make four weeks since Tim and I quit smoking. I think. I’ve lost count. It could be three.
Anyway, last night I dreamt that I was walking up a great big hill in the dark.
I had a back pack on and when I looked inside I found a single smoke.
Instead, I went to a night club with that back pack and sold ecstasy and speed.
I ran in to an old school acquaintance there. Alberto. If I saw him on the street I wouldn’t know him.
He was selling coffee.
We traded two packs of coffee for two tablet’s of E.
I don’t even drink coffee?
Go Figure.
Sorry, it’s big, so you’ll have to click on the link to see what I am on about. Just another of my rants and raves. Am I the only one that finds humor in this youtube suggestion???
Dude, as I have said before…is the best cat ever. But right now, and many times throughout every single day, I want to strangle him. Right now, Dude and I are fighting. It’s a battle of will’s and I just don’t think I’m winning.
Dude is an inside cat. Not because I force him to be an inside cat but because he likes to be inside. The only time he really likes to go outside is if WE go outside. Even then, he wont stray much more than a few meter’s from where we are.
So to set the scene. At the old house, Dude was locked in the bathroom overnight, because if I let him stay out then he sleeps on my face and is in to everything he shouldn’t be. But here the only place to lock him is the laundry. But he doesn’t like that, even though he has always been locked up overnight. In the laundry he has put his paw under the door and scratched and meowed to be let out ALL BLOODY NIGHT!
The problem with that is that the laundry is close to Jaxon’s room. While I couldn’t hear Dude from the other end of the house, Jaxon could and if Jaxon doesn’t sleep, mama don’t sleep either. So for the last three nights I’ve had to suck it up and let Dude run free range overnight.
I’ve left the laundry door open with kitty litter in it for him. Because for some reason Dude has forgotten how to hold it for the night, even though for the last year he did perfectly while locked in the bathroom.
So three nights in a row now Dude has slept out. Three nights in a row now I’ve noticed that he’s not used his kitty litter tray. Until the morning. After I have made him go outside with Mexxi.
This pisses me off. This morning I caught him in the act. I caught him before he went and threw him out the laundry door. He walked around the house, through the back door, in to the laundry and tried to go in his tray. So I threw him out again. He walked around the house, came in and tried again. So this time I threw him out and closed the back door. So he came around and meowed to get back in for 20 minutes. When I ignored him he climbed the security door.
I just know that if I don’t let him in to go in his tray, he’s going to sit at that door ALL day and meow at me and scratch at the glass door to be let in. I know that when I finally say screw it and let him in, he’s going to go right in and use the litter tray.
This is only a little bit of a bigger complaint, but I don’t have time to list the other shit Dude’s been getting up to in the last week or two. Don’t get me started on a cat that will not go outside during the day but spends the night sitting at windows meowing to get out.
Under the Laundry Door
Now could you please watch this clip…
Just in case you didn’t nbotice the first time, you may want to go back and check out the last clip.
Yup, what a name change will do huh?? The Wiggles, formerly, The Cockroaches.
Please take the time to watch this clip, it’s vital to my next post. The sound is pretty bad, but you’ll get through it.
At the old house when Jaxon started crawling, Tim and I took the easy way out. What I now refer to as The Lazy Parent method of putting baby gates up so that he couldn’t go where we didn’t want him to.
Jaxon couldn’t get in the kitchen, so the fridge, microwave, pantry, rubbish bin and sink were all out of bounds for Jaxon. He couldn’t get to the bathroom or the toilet, our bedroom, a spare bedroom or the sun room.
He couldn’t get in to the laundry or “Oscar’s Room” and he couldn’t get outside freely. All he had was his bed room, the lounge room and dining room and the computer room.
Just because he was so short, the dining room table was out of reach and so anything that we didn’t want him to see or touch or have we simply put in the rooms he couldn’t get to, or on the table.
Coming here though we decided that we’d let Jaxon be a free range toddler. He doesn’t have access to everything, but not because we’ve put up gates. Just because we think he needs supervision in those rooms.
So the other day he was in our bedroom playing on the bed. Of course this is a novelty to him. Here he can climb our bed, he can open our bed side tables. He can get to all of our mobile phones.
While Tim and I laid on the bed waiting for him to come up and join us, he explored my bed side table. I knew what was going to happen. Because I have a little vibrating egg sitting in my top drawer. You know, the one with the remote control and the cord to the egg??
Well, Jaxon picked up the remote control and immediately pushed on the button’s. The egg part started jumping about and vibrating (dah) all about making a heck of a noise. The sheer look of terror on his face as he backed away from my top drawer like there was a 15 foot snake in it was absolutely priceless!
There are times in my life when I don’t have the camera, but surely wish that I had. I’ll have to try again next week
Following the Great Ducky Meltdown, Tim, Jaxon and I went on a HUGE Duck hunt.
The store which had originally stocked Ducky no longer ran that line. I asked them to check their storage, their computer’s. I asked them to call other store’s. But no, no more Ducks.
The next best thing, as everyone knows, is EBAY.
The real problem was that the only two ducks we could find were from America, and Australian’s can not use the US Ebay unless they have a US address.
So to my girls I looked. Kelly was kind enough to buy them for me and post them out.
They arrived yesterday, and clearly they were not some other child’s “blanky” (AKA lovey, comforter)
I have a video, which I am yet to edit. It was the first time Jaxon got to see his new Duckies. It involved “rub tests” “touch tests” “cuddle tests” and last but certainly not least, the taste test.
Before you ask, can Jaxon tell??
Yes.
He can.
And those other duckies, are not worthy!
The new Duckies are clean and smell quite nice, they are soft and new. They still sing their “singing in the rain” songs. Most importantly I think, their bum’s just don’t taste the same.
I know I keep talking in the past, but we were without Internet for a week and then I’ve been screwing around with this stupid new site for a couple weeks now and in that time I’ve had things I could have said and haven’t.
Anyway. Moving to this new house was very hard for Jaxon. It was obviously his first move, having been brought home to the other place. The day to day stuff was easy enough, but the night’s, particularly bed time, were incredibly hard. I’m talking 3 and 4 hour fights for the first couple of nights, and then up to 2 hour fights for about a week.
It was awful for him. Even when he was tired he didn’t want to be left alone and sleep in his new room. I totally understand, in a round about kind of way. But it’s only the first night I want to talk about.
On the first night Jaxon finally went to sleep at about 11pm. But then in the quiet of the night (3am) he woke up screaming the house down. He was terrified and would not settle no matter what I did for him. So at about 4.30am I finally decided that I was cold and needed to sit down. So I walked up to the lounge room, which is across from our bedroom. Up until then, Tim had no idea this was going on, which is generally the way I like it to be. But when he finally clicked on and woke up to the noise he suggested that I bring Jaxon in to the bed with us.
Now I know that other parents do this all the time. But I have never ever ever ever had Jaxon in the bed, except to play. So this was a first. Tim is such a heavy sleeper and often I wake up to find him sprawled out half on top of me. And then me, on the other end of the scales. I’m a light sleeper and I’ve never been able to relax knowing that Jaxon is in the bed and that he could be easily smothered by either of us. But for this one occasion, I was getting pretty desperate to try something that would calm Jaxon down.
Calm him down it did. Put him to sleep, it did not. But he was quiet and that was the main thing. Tim started snoring two minutes later and that made Jaxon laugh. Since Tim needed to work in 1.5 hours after a huge move, I decided that the best thing to do would be to get up and let Jaxon sleep when he was ready to sleep. because having him laying between us was not getting ME any sleep either.
Seeing that he was up all night and the day before had been so big for him, this is was happened at 9am. Another first, because Jaxon has never fallen asleep anywhere but his cot. Not in his pram, rarely in the car seat, never at the table, never while shopping. Sleeping is for babies, or so Jaxon tell’s me.
And then THIS happened. And as I say, this never ever in a million years happens. Jaxon hasn’t slept on the couch with us, in our arms, or anything. So this was a REALLY special first for me!
Just because…
If you can’t see it clearly from the clip…
I don’t think we’ve ever lost so much during a move. But this time we’ve lost plenty. From the car key’s, to where Dude’s brush got packed, to a single pillow case that I really want before our new bed get’s delivered. Oh and Mexxi got out and away on our first day here too, but she got picked up down the road by a council worker.
Of all the things that we’ve lost, our cat would have to be the biggest thing ever. It was 3 coming on 4 weeks ago now that Oscar slipped out the back door in his first 24 hours here.
It’s never happened before. The closest we came was Diva the first night I moved in with Tim, but we managed to catch her.
The key’s bother me, because they had the remote key for the car on it and they’re expensive to replace. The cat’s brush, I can buy another one of those and never even know the other is missing. And the pillow case I did just find while looking for the keys in the shed.
I just wonder, at what point do I stop wondering? Get what I mean? I wonder if he’s even alive. I wonder if someone has taken him in. I wonder if he’s just still travelling back to the old house.
I wonder. When do you move on??
Tomorrow will make week three since the day Tim and I quit smoking. For me it will make one full week since I’ve had a smoke.
For anyone that’s ever quit smoking you’ll know that there is a distinction between the two. It’s been three weeks since I was smoking any time I want, and one week since seeing a friend down the street where we bummed a single smoke off her.
I’ve been a smoker for five years now, and for five years I’ve been trying to quit. Growing up I managed to stay “clean” and never ever even tried a smoke. But 6 months after I met Tim, something happened. Jury Duty.
Have you ever been called to Judy duty and not been called to court? Well I have. It was the longest, loneliest day of my life. Twelve hours we were kept. We couldn’t leave the room we were in, we had no TV and no music. I sat for a large part of the day doing a puzzle by myself. But there was a room just off the one we were unable to leave, that was outside and set aside just for smokers.
What I noticed that day was that all of the non smoker’s were sitting inside, all of them alone. There was not one conversation going on. But outside, with the smoker’s, everyone was smiling and chatting and no one was sitting alone.
I felt completely isolated. So I went out side and I made some friends. By asking someone for a smoke.
On my way home I bought my own pack. I had now been a smoker for 6 hours. When I got home I clearly remember sitting up against my car in the back yard talking to Tim and him saying that he didn’t want me to become a smoker. In all of my wisdom, I said, “I wont”
Now five years later, we’re using a drug called CHAMPIX to help us quit. We simply do not crave smoking like we would have in all of our previous (and failed) attempts. We have a three months supply and you can only do it once a year. But it’s working. If we play our cards right we’ll break ALL of our smoking habits. That includes smoking in the back yard when friends visit.
The problem with this I have found is that ALL of our friends are smokers. And while the CHAMPIX helps us to not crave, it only really works (for me, anyway) if the smokes are not in the house. But the second I know there is a smoke and that I could have one, I want it.
So we’ve asked all of our friends not to bring smokes in with them. We’ve asked them not to smoke while they’re at our house.
It would seem like a reasonable request to me. It’s not like they visit for ten hours at a time. They come for a coffee, they go.
But since I’ve asked those friends not to smoke at our house, they haven’t visited for nearly two weeks. It seems it’s too much to ask of them, to not smoke for 45 minutes.
So now I find myself in exactly the same situation as when I first started. I feel isolated because NONE of our friends are non smokers. I wonder now, if I’ll have to go out and find new friends, and if that will increase our chances in the long run of remaining non-smoker’s ourselves.
We bought this for Jaxon the other day. It could have been wrapped up all ready for Christmas but someone couldn’t wait. It took Tim two hours to pump it up, I gave up after one tyre!
See that hat? No, we don’t make him wear it inside. That is Jaxon’s very first fashion statement!
There is 192 ball’s in that truck. Yes, we’re anal, we counted!
Road Kill??? We’re yet to find out what will happen if Dude get’s in or decide’s it might make a good scratching post!
I was kindly told via email that one of my reader’s is “patiently waiting” for my ABOUT pages to be updated.
Now I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. Since I came across to discoverboo, which for me was a little over a week and a half ago.
The problem is, how exactly do you write an about you page? To me it’s a bit like when you go to a job interview and your prospective employer says “tell me why I should give YOU this job?” Because you have to blow smoke up you your own ass at the same time as trying not to sound like an arrogant self absorbed twat.
Well, you know what?? I still don’t know what I want to write about me on my about page. All I know is what I want for my blog. I want to keep posting the family stuff and the thoughts and what not. Nothing is going to change in that regard. But there have been things happen to me in my life that I’d love to talk about. There are things you don’t know about me that you may not need to know but that I want to share. I’ve kept it off here simply because I was worried about the day Jaxon is old enough to read these pages, and what he might think or what it might make him feel about me.
But the truth is that I don’t want to lie to Jaxon just to save him from facing the real world. I’m his mother but I am not perfect. The things I talk about you may not like and to that I say this. I am not forcing you to read my blog. I have free reign here, and if it hurts you, offends you, scares you or mortifies you, don’t click on the link.
So my about me page, which will be ready fairly shortly, is going to have a few shocks for you in it. Things that you don’t know. Things that I want to talk about because once upon a time, when I really thought I was alone, I really wasn’t. But no one told the truth. No one put up their hand and said “I do that too” or “I know exactly what you mean”
I believe that everything happens for a reason. I think I have a lot to offer a lot of people simply because I am now willing to put my hand up and say, this is me. I often wonder what the purpose of all of my pain has been over the years and now wonder if it wasn’t so that I could sit here and share it, so that I might help someone who thinks they are alone. Someone that might be sitting on the edge right now thinking that nothing in the world could help them.
I hope that by telling the truth about who I really am and the things I have gone through and done to get to this point in my life (happy) I can help someone else see that it’s not impossible to fall in to the depths of despair and still make it out alive.
You know, all I really wanted when I came over to a new web site was to be able to change the things I wanted to change without being limited in what I could change.
I wanted to move away from the blogger scene. Not for any special reason but I guess one of the things is that I want to change the way I blog. I want my site to be more than a Mum blog. I’ll get in to all of that later but for now I just want to say this one thing (you know, in ten paragraphs)
If you’re a blogger over at blogger.com…and you want a change, start wearing your bra and undies on the outside of your clothes. Start drinking tea instead of coffee. Wear your left shoe on your right foot and your right on your left. Get a hair cut, shave just one side of each leg one week and finish it all off the next week. Do anything, but do NOT change from blogger.com!
I don’t say this lightly and I think if I show you exactly why I am saying it you might understand.
Firstly, this shit is hard. I saw a blog I liked using wordpress…so I went over to wordpress to have a look around. If you do the same you’ll see that they say things like “easy” and “five minute install” That might be so for someone that hasn’t had their blog handed to them on a template platter, but for those of us who have been hand fed out layouts and themes from the get go…this is not child’s play.
The problems we’ve had are endless. I say “we” because even Tim, who you all know is pretty computer savvy, was gobsmacked by everything we had to do and learn. It really has taken us weeks. And when I say weeks I really mean weeks. For hours we’ve sat here banging our collective heads against a brick wall. And when we finally broke through that brick wall we found that there was another one on the other side, just a different colour.
It’s not only been trouble finding and understanding what to do with a host server, figuring out how to use FTP program’s and their control panel’s, but the methods for changing things using HTML. A word that is not so Chinese to Tim, but absolute babble to me. I don’t even know what HTML stands for, much less how to use it. Oh wait, a google search tells me that HTML stands for “hypertext markup language.” Glad I got that sorted.
So I’ve been all over the forum’s on this. There are FOUR forum’s that I have access to. And all of them deal in different sections of your site so if you should happen to post a question on the wrong one you just get redirected. I’ve been going around in circles for days and I really don’t think I’m getting anywhere. Unless step one: you’re a loser counts for anything??
So I’m not sure you heard me on the getting a hair cut thing and wanted to make sure that if you weren’t already put off, then you would be. By this.
This is simply an example. Not an actual answer. But when I ask a question (how do I edit my header?) on a forum and tell someone I’m really new to everything I’m doing and get this…
That’s easy. All you need to do is put this in your css file.
<title><?php
if ( is_single() ) { single_post_title(); }
elseif ( is_home() ) { bloginfo(‘name’); print ‘ | ‘; bloginfo(‘description’); pageGetPageNo(); }
elseif ( is_page() ) { single_post_title(”); }
elseif ( is_search() ) { bloginfo(‘name’); print ‘ | Search results for ‘ . wp_specialchars($s); pageGetPageNo(); }
elseif ( is_404() ) { bloginfo(‘name’); print ‘ | Not Found’; }
else { bloginfo(‘name’); wp_title(‘|’); pageGetPageNo(); }
?></title>
<meta http-equiv=”content-type” content=”<?php bloginfo(‘html_type’) ?>; charset=<?php bloginfo(‘charset’) ?>” />
<meta name=”description” content=”<?php bloginfo(‘description’) ?>” />
<?php if(is_search()) { ?>
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, nofollow” />
<?php }?>
<link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”<?php bloginfo(‘stylesheet_url’); ?>” />
<link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” href=”<?php bloginfo(‘rss2_url’) ?>” title=”<?php echo wp_specialchars(get_bloginfo(‘name’), 1) ?> <?php _e(‘Posts RSS feed’, ‘thematic’); ?>” />
It really pisses me off. Needless to say we’re still banging our heads against a brick wall.
I don’t know what a CSS file is (i do now, no thanks to anyone!!!!) much less where to find it or where to put the suggested HTML.
The only forums I’ve ever been on were for pregnancy or, gasp, depression sites. All very helpful and warm places to be. But these forums, no comment.
So in short, or not so short, don’t do it. Save whatever sanity you have for figuring out just which side of your leg you should shave this week. It will be much less painful and humiliating.
Coming across to this domain has been nothing but trouble. This is in fact about 3 weeks in the making. Many long and late hours were spent here by both Tim and myself figuring out some of the simple things. That weren’t so simple. Finally, a few days ago it all started coming together. Enough for me to start thinking about announcing my new site to everyone.
But one of the problems that I’ve had is that when I exported my Kicking and Screaming posts over here to discoverboo, the video’s I had embedded over at blogger didn’t come across. So I’ve not only had to find those video’s again, but edit them again, upload them again and find where to put them AGAIN!!
That’s what I’ve been doing for the last two days. Searching my computer archives and CD file’s looking for the clips and then redoing it all again. In between spending time with Jaxon, unpacking a new house and settling in, and eating or sleeping, I’ve been running back and forth setting video’s up to download.
This wasn’t really a problem, since most of the video’s I’ve done right up until now have remained on my computer. I could locate the file depending on the time stamp back at K&S and then look for it in my folders (I”m very well organized about months and dates)
It’s this video clip that has just caused quite a bit of pain.
I have no way of putting it here because I haven’t found it. This is the ONLY video clip that will be stored on a disk. I also can’t just go to a specific month or day because it’s a falshback. As I looked through all of my disks, having major flashbacks I found a special clip.
Let me just describe it to you, since you may not think it’s as funny as I thought when I first took the clip. Jaxon is sitting in his rocking chair being all cute and cuddly and making funny little sounds. He’s oooo’ing and ahhhh’ing and babbling away. Just as I was about to say “awwwwwwww, how sweet” he started grunting. That’s right. I was video taping Jaxon doing a grunting poo!
But then, I noticed his arm in it. The clip was taken a few weeks before we knew there was an issue. I was saying to Tim “Hey look, it’s so obvious” just as the camera begins to scan the room and there, laying peacefully at his side, is Maddy. It was very unexpected and it hurt. I regret every day what happened to Maddy. I regret that we gave out on her because other things were happening with Jaxon that needed more attention than we could give her.
It hurts me every time I think of her to think that if we had just slugged it out those two weeks that I was going to be away, we just might have had all the time in the world for her. Hindsight is a bitch, because we just didn’t know going in to Riverton ragged and broken that when we returned Jaxon would be 95% better, sleeping and eating well.
I miss Maddy. It hurts all the more because I know we gave up on her. I know that we took the easier way out under the circumstances. And even though IÂ know I still did the right thing for Jaxon and the family, I know I did the wrong thing by her. And by my heart.
I’ve had people tell me she was just a dog. But people who know me know that I have never owned any old dog. My dogs have always been a strong part of my family, even before I met Tim. For three years before we had Jaxon, Maddy was our only child. I’d give anything to have her back.
This is my official welcoming message. The site is not complete, and you may not notice any difference’s from the old Kicking and Screaming. But believe me when I say *I* am going to notice, even if you don’t. I’m sorry about that big ass photo of me up in my header, I need more time to work on a real one.
People are asking why I’ve made the change and the best thing I can say is that I found a woman’s blog months and months ago and absolutely loved the layout. It was just amazing…and hosted on wordpress. When I tried to make similar changes over at blogger I got frustrated at the lack of control I had, even if I had hundred’s of options. There were certain things I wanted to change and couldn’t.
Why discoverboo.com?? Seriously? Have you ever tried to buy yourself a cheap domain name for exactly what you want? Well, let me tell you! We tried kickingandscreaming.com (go have a look! It’s not even that its already a worthy web site, it’s been stolen by some money making assholes who want me to pay $700 for it! Instead of $12 for an available one) but it was not available as a .com, only a .com.au. And to get a .com.au domain you have to be a registered business. Now I am all for my being unique and having my own domain name…but registering a business just to host a blog was out of the question.
We tried at least 30 different variation’s on kicking and screaming. We tried to come up with a different tag line. “shadesofgrey”, “littlewhitelies” “nothingbutlies”, “nothingbuttruth”, “nothingbutbullshit”, but only ran in to the same problem. It was either unavailable, or not available as a dot com. I even tried “idontgiveaflyingfuckwhatwecallit.com” Funnily enough…that was mine for the taking!
Two weeks later and we still didn’t have a domain name. Tim was sitting here at my computer typing crap in to the domain name search engine and I was watching TV. An anti-abortion add came on. It’s nothing really special. I’ve always thought that there must be more to the add than the bit they keep repeating. Because unless you actually look at their website you don’t know that “discoveremily.com” is an anti-abortion campaign. Anyway, I saw that and yelled out at Tim, who by now was pulling his hair out trying to help me find a name. And sure enough, discoverboo.com was available.
After two weeks of messing about with one tiny little detail, we took it. And here you are. Welcome to my site. I hope you enjoy what you read and I hope you enjoy the changes I make, please leave me a comment if you do or don’t.
A quick word of warning. Over at Kicking and Screaming I left a lot of stuff that I would have liked to have posted off the site in case it might offend people, or that one day Jaxon might read it. None of that here. If I want to say it, it’s going here. Get used to it, it’s all about discovering the real Boo 
Ducky sat abandoned on the floor in the hallway and I thought I’d take advantage of his lack of interest and give Ducky a big bath.
So Ducky had a bath and then while Jaxon rode his new bike in the backyard, paying no attention to what I was doing, I hung Jaxon’s clothes and his Duck on the clothes line.
When I prompted Jaxon to come back in he rode his bike right under the line.
He almost got all the way under without looking up. I thought I was safe. But just as he came out from under the line, he stopped, turned and LOOKED UP.
That was the end of Jaxon for the next half an hour while Ducky dried on the line.
I brought Jaxon inside and I tried to entice him with food and something to drink. I even tried COKE! Coke…I tried COKE to help him forget that his beloved Duck was being tortured in the back yard.
Nothing worked. He cried right up until we took his duck off the line so he could suck on his bum again.
Don’t think badly of me for taking photo’s of this melt down. It’s not like he was crying for 2 minutes, this was a half an hour affair. You know, you get to the point where you just can’t do anything for them, and the best thing to do is take photo’s…so you can tease them about it when they’re 21!
Stay tuned for our adventures in Ducky hunting…finding a replacement has not been easy!