Anyone lost a bubba?

Wordful Wednesday

Only in my house. Madeleine was patting Chiquita very gently. I was so proud as we have had some bashing lately. I ran and got the camera to get some lovely baby doggy shots


I changed angles and then

Oh Madeleine!

As a end note I screamed and they didn't make contact!

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Family Pictures

Wayne's Dad wanted a nice family picture to send to his mother in England. Everyone cooperated apart from one member of our family!

Johno's hangover

Over Easter Johno came and stayed. Wayne and Johno stayed up late playing playstation. I did feel a little bit of pity for him waking up a bit hungover with the Oliver girls!

Katie - this is how New Years Day is going to start for you - hahahahaha!

Easter

Better late than never! As expected chocolate was a big hit in our house!

Juliette finding an egg left by the easter bunny

Madeleine and Juliette stopping for a quick chocolate break

Maddie eating and driving

Jules

Maddie and Poppa

Stones

Finally I've finished pulling out all the stones out of the front garden. It's been a massive job. I knew it would be and I'm so pleased it's finished!

I've put them up on trademe in the hope that someone will come and take them away. We need intend to put them in the skip that we had over the weekend however we realised pretty quickly that we had so many that there wouldn't be room for anything else!

For those of you that have nothing better to do than watch a rock auction click here!

Oliver Update

It's been a while since I have done one of these - am thinking that I might start doing it weekly. As I've even failed this week to do a Wordful Wednesday I'm not sure how successful I will be however!

I'll start off with me first. I'm still incredibly busy with the house. I'm finding the amount of housework that a larger house means sometimes overwhelming. I'm lucky that Wayne's Mum does alot of my laundry but I find it difficult when everywhere I look there is mess. I'm starting to clean out alot of stuff that is hanging around and pretty much just gets dropped around the house for me to pick up and in the last week or so it has got better.

The diet is going well - I'm 5 kilo's off my ultimate goal but 1 kilo off my weightwatchers goal. We are going to Samoa on holiday in 4 weeks time so I'm trying to get well below 60 kilo's before we go. I've been really good at getting up early every morning and running with the wii fit. I aim to do an hour run a day and so far bar one day I've done it.

I'm starting a new hair routine - the curly girl method I'm not looking forward to the 2 - 4 weeks it's supposed to take for my hair to sort itself out. So far embracing my inner curl is going ok but I'm only on day 1!

House wise - I'm plastering the internal walls on days that the weather is awful but we haven't had many so I'm concentrating on the garden. I'm about to list on trade me a huge number of stones and hope that someone will come and pick them up! The fence is up so that is giving us some privacy. Wayne's made a semi temporary 'pen' to hold our children in as Madeleine in particular was running down the road probably on her way to the 4 square to buy lollies.

Wayne is busy at work and is about to go on a 4 day work trip to Auckland. He's been working the last few Saturdays. It's cutting into his family and house time which I know he finds difficult.

Trelise had her hearing assessment yesterday and passed! So speech therapy will be the next step for us. We still are in the public heath system and the audiologist has said she will do her best to get an urgent appointment with the hospital as they have equipment that is often better suited for children. Her behaviour has been a bit difficult this week and I'm thinking school hoilday's are to blame and the lack of her normal rountine.

Maddie and Jules are in a really really cute stage. Difficult for me as everytime I tell them off they smile and it just melts my heart. I have to fill out this huge questionnaire for the Developmental Therapist today. Will be interesting to see how much they can do. I'm unsure why we still have all our neonatal appointments especially as I read in the latest Wellington Multiple birth newsletter that the other Mono mother in Wellington had her appointments stop at 1 year - we are now 20 months with no sign of stopping. It worries me that there is something they are keeping an eye on that I don't understand. I haven't questioned it before as I felt that getting this support was a good thing and I didn't want to raise it with them that my girls were normal and didn't really need it!

Wordful Wednesday

It's Wordful Wednesday but this week with a difference! I'm running a poll.

I want to enter a Pumpkin Patch competition with the winner receiving $1000 Pumpkin Patch vouchers and a Pumpkin Patch photo shoot. Now of course I think my girls are the most beautiful and it's pointless for anyone else to enter but apparently I still have to go through the administration of the contest!

I've narrowed down my choices for entering Trelise - which is better? The blue or the pink?



Don't worry I'm entering Madeleine and Juliette as well they just haven't got a good enough shot yet!

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Wordful Wednesday

Trelise's first fish!

Wayne and Trelise had a big day out involving trying fishing off the wharf for the first time and watching the powerboat racing on Wellington Harbour. The powerboats has been a yearly outing for Wayne and Trelise and they love it.

You can visit more Wordful Wednesday posts at Seven Clown Circus!

Trelise's Hearing and Vision Test

Our system here works on a cycle where a hearing tester comes to your child's pre-school and tests everyone's ears on a semi regular basis. Quite some time before we left Wellington Trelise was tested and failed her test. Because a failed test could be because of a temporary issue like a cold you need to fail two in a row to be referred on to the health system. Trelise's speech is not as clear as other children which makes her hard to understand and causes her frustration. The more I had been thinking about it the more I wondered if hearing was her issue and it has reduced her patience and is causing her to flip out at times.

I'm been patiently waiting for the next round of tests - when we joined up at Kindy one of the first things I made them aware of was Trelise's failed test. I mentioned it again in passing a few weeks ago and one of the teachers said "Oh the system has all changed now and you have to take them for the tests" "Yikes! and under my breath thanks for telling me! The testing office is just down the road thankfully so I rushed down.

But being a small centre hearing and vision tests are only held on the 1st and 3rd Tuesday's of the month between 10 - 12pm - so my first visit was unsuccessful.

2nd attempt - pulled Trelise out of kindy early to race down to find the office empty as I had misread my calendar.

so I'm been waiting patiently for the 1st Tuesday of the month to roll around. I went to pick up Trelise early today and found a notice on the Kindy's door saying that hearing and vision checks are being held today at the Plunket rooms (totally different place on the other side of town). The admin lady rang and spoke to someone who confirmed that they we holding them at the Plunket rooms. So off we went. I decided to go to the Plunket rooms instead of the hearing testing place (which was closer) as I thought there couldn't possibly be two hearing clinics running on the same day and as the Admin lady had rung up the Plunket ones must be where it is. The Plunket rooms are off the main state highway so I grabbed my girls and forcefully had to steer them away from the road. Got inside and found - no hearing tests! Rang the phone number I had to have a long winded conversation with someone who said that I probably would have missed the other place as the hearing tester as she was leaving early.

I could only be described as half insane by now as I dragged everyone back out to the car. I rushed and lucky for us the office was still open and she wasn't rushing off.

I dragged the tribe inside and Trelise got her vision and hearing tested and failed both! So we now have her referal. She failed her hearing test with no high tones detected. Explains why me screaming at her often has no result!! I'm confused now why we weren't referred after failing the first test as the way she failed was not usual and it's unlikely to be because of glue ear.

I'm hoping that the audiology appointment comes around quickly - if it doesn't then we will have an option of paying for one privately. I'm not pleased that she has a problem but I am pleased that at least now there may be an explanation for some of her behavioural issues.

I love our new doors!

Finally yesterday the window in our lounge came out and was replaced with doors. Once Wayne builds a fence we will have a large outdoor area off our lounge. Until then however our lounge is totally exposed from the street so I will be spending quite some time with the curtains closed!

Wordful Wednesday

When it's quiet there is always a reason!

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