Assignments coming out of my ears, wont get finished on time.... kids tearing my hair out for me (thanks kody!) Thank god for minti!!

EDIT--

Only one exam left yippeeeeee!

Firstly, I found Woollies sell lactose free yoghurt. Yay for me. No more guilty feelings trying to sneak yoghurt to LIam without Kody knowing. He can have his own and not get sick from it.

Secondly, we finally got Liam's appointment to get checked out. He suffers from anxiety, as well as obsessive compulsive disorder. Much better than autism or aspergers (which is what we suspected), and a lot easier to manage. We know how to make his life easier and less stressful as well as understand whats going on with him and knowing what kind if situations will other him and thus able to help prepare him for situations coming up.

Thats all for know :)

No, I haven't disappeared off the face of the planet! I can't beleive it's been so long though! Firstly, I would like to thank everyone for the million compliments, trikes, gifts and emails I have received while I've been in 'studyland'. NOw the update,  I just moved house (Again, I know!), its a lovely hosue with a room for each of the boys as well as a toy room, and a MASSIVE yard for them to play in, which is awesome because while liam is a gentle creature, his little brother sure is a boisterous child! ok now for the big updates.

Ok, Kody first. He's now just over 1 year old, and a big cuddly gorgeous boy. His weight height and size are all where its meant to be, and hes happy. He tries to copy everything his big brother says, loves to boogie, give cuddles and kisses and clap whenever you say hes clever. He's incredibly musical, and sings a lot. He sometimes even taps his foot in time with music when he's sleeping. At the moment he runs around the house yelling WAK WAK WAK. Liam just learnt how to sing "5 little ducks" and he especially likes the quack quaxk part! While we have dealt with his lactose intolerance fairly well (calcium fortified rice milk, soymilk gives him constipation), it often feels unfair that he cant eat most of the stuff we do, even though he has his 'special' food instead. We have also discovered in the last fortnight that he has an allergy to food additive 330 which is a preservative,, and found in basically any kind of fruit juice or anything with apples or anythign citric in it. I havea firm suspicion that this is related to my citric acid allergy but cannot confirm. Our doctor doesnt want to risk allergy testing on him until he is 2. I have a large suspicion that he will have many  intolerances and allergies like I do. This is making grocery shopping rather difficult.

Liam is nearly three now (omg where did the time go?). He is a self-sufficient toilet user, he only needs help to turn the tap on to wash his hands. This is giving me a lot of freedom! He still spins around in circles when he dances, does his puzzles upsidedown, his memory is phenomonal, he can  recite half of just about any movie he has ever watched (the little mermaid, the heffalump movie, mary poppins, horton hears a who, robin hood, willy wonka...) quite amazing. He speaks in sentances and is amazing everyone he speaks to (excuse me, can you talk quieter, im concentrating!) He loves being a big brother and helping his brother. He tries to teach Kody everything he knows, and its so sweet. He's becoming quite a gentleman lately, he opens my car door for me to get in, and also comes and opens it for me to get out! and he tells me every morning that im gorgeous lol. the cutest thing is when I sneeze. its not jjust 'bless you', its 'bless you darling'. So adorable. I have started the massive uphill battle of trying to get him diagnosed with autism. I am certain he has asperger's syndrome, as I have a family history of it and know what the 'calling cards' if you will, are. Its not anything to worries me, i love him all the same. He is very quirky in that way, and I just want to find out EXACTLY what it is, so I can help him better and help him learn to adjust to life the way he needs to.

Brian is fighting his fight against depression, ADHD, chronic fatigue,, arthritis and carpal tunnell.... I married a cripple :P

Now, we love eachother very much and I am doing all that I can to support him through these very difficult times. He is doing awesome in his studies and is planning to enrol in a computer games graphic design course or something like that through a uni in WA next year as an external student.  He is loving being a daddy and it seems to be the most important thing in his life. Which is how it should be :)

NOw for me. Sheesh. I have two years of uni left, and Im practically begging for someone to give me a classroom. I just cant wait to get in and do my thing. I know we have pracs, but it isnt the same. For the most part, you generally have different methods and philosophies to the other teacher, and you basically have to go with how they do things in order to pass. Sad reality but its true. I guess you cant expect someone who did their degree in the 80's to have the same ideas as those of us who are studying now. THings change. I have had some pretty nasty health problems. Our old doctor gave me a pill that was 2-2.5 times the normal dose, so over the past year or so fake estrogen (which is actually structurally closer to testosterone than estrogen) has been building up in my system, causing me stress, which produces more estrogen, creating migraines and more stress, thus even more estrogen to the point that my body thought it was pregnant, went into shock because it couldnt find a baby, and i ultimately overdosed on estrogen. I went through withdrawal and all sorts of things. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. It has to be the worst week and a half of my life. I am not intolerant to oral contraceptives as a result of the amount of fake estrogen i consumed.  All this while I was moving and in the middle of the largest assignment I have completed to date (which I lost when my computer died for no apparent reason.) Oh yeah! In May the university gave me a scholarship.... they gave me a laptop cause my old computer was way too out of date and wasn't good enough to run their website. they give out 1 laptop every year, so I was pretty honoured to get this one.

I have brians brother and one of his sister's coming down to visit us in a few weeks, and then his mother is coming a feww weeks after that. It's going to be nice because none of his family have had an opportunity to meet our Kody yet, and he gets so excited talking to them on skype. Liam loves skype. He can talk everyon'es ear off and not have said enough.

I think thats it for now...

SOMEONE GIVE ME A CLASSROOM WITH SOME KIDS TO TEACH!!!!

I kno, its unusual these days for me to blog so soon after my last, but im being a tad naughty and staying up late.

We have finally found out what is happening with our little Kody.  I think I mentioned last blog that he had gastro. Well after having the runs for a week we decided to take him to the doctor (who squeezed his tummy and wondered why he pooped every where and had it dripping into her shoes...). She said to give him starchy foods like rice and mashed potato. This is to a kid the size of a newborn (not kidding, my nephew who is like 3 weeks old is roughly the same size!) because the pooing had damaged the cells lining his intestine and milk was aggravating it and shedding the lining each time he was fed. She said to come back in a week if it hadnt settled down and she would look into it further. Needless to say, even a spoonful of Farex in his bottle made it to thick for him to swallow and we were then faced the the problem of not being able to feed him anything.

After my incident when liam was only tiny (i blogged about this in my very first blogs) I was not taking some dumb doctors word over my own instincts. I was NOT going to be called a bad aprent by some doctor that didnt know me or my family, and I was not going to be blamed for an already underweight child losing more weight.

We rang the useless 13health number who DIDNT call an ambulance for once! They did however,suggest that what the doctor had told us was dangerous and to go see someone at the hospital, and that they would probably want to test for gardia.

So... we drove into the hospital and had him checked out and they took a poop sample. After speaking to a doctor who may possibly be related to doctor death ( anyone in oz would know who im talking about!) we went home very confused and rather pi**ed off. First of all, the triage nurse told me to tell the doctor that we wanted a referral to a pediatrician about kody's weight, which has had all the doctors a bit concerned. When I told the doctor this he said ' okay i will ask them'. Okay... not what i meant! 

After examining Kody, he then left to talk to a pediatrician. After  awhile he came back, and regurgitated some information. When we asked a question, he either didnt understand what HE was talking about or had to go ask someone else. He then told us to give kody some electrolite replacement powder. We asked if we gave that to him instead of his bottle, he said yes, then a few minutes later changed his mind to in btween bottles. then as we were leaving decided that he didnt actually need it anyway, as he wasnt dehydrated!

Well i knew he wasnt dehydrated, as several nurses and doctors had seen him over the past 24 hours and had said he wasnt dehydrated... i rang 13health AGAIn when i got home confused more thna ever. They didnt know what the electrolyrte powder was, it was NOT the one for infants and said to chuck it out. He wasnt dehydrated so it wouldnt do anything good for him. They said jsut to continue feeding him as normal. When we got the results of the poop test, we found out he is lactose intolerant! This is quite possibly the reason he has been unable to effectively gain weight, and also the reason he was born so small! I basically lived off dairy products, and he would not have benefited much from any of that during my entire pregnancy.

Its sad that it took almost 5 months to even test for this, instead of just saying he'll grow when he's ready. Its even sadder that my doctor was going to wait an extra week!

But the good news is we can get prescriptions for lactose free formula from the GP.... and it cost us About $5 for 5 tins of karicare brand formula... roughly 98c a tin... which saved us $140. it also alleviatres somewhat the dreaded problem with running out of formula at 5am and then having to go out as soon as the chemist opens to buy more.... you have to get all 5 tins at a time so you have a pretty good stockpile!

The other stupid thing is the doctor seems to want to try him on normal formula again after the five weeks... I know you can outgrow lactose inolerance, but i highly doubt that quickly. Some people dont out grow it at all.  As soon as brian gets his test results sorted out we are getting a new GP. This one has only been practising fora year, and doesnt seem to mind experimenting on children. Not my idea of a good GP.

Thats not to say I WANT my child to be lactose intolerant. Though its not something i see as a bad thing either. sure, it means changes, but apart from death and taxes, what else can you depend on? (unless your at avending machine, the only place in which change is NOT inevitable!). But i think i would be a whole lot moe comfortable waiting a few months, instead of 5 weeks to test again, especially if he has had it all along, i doubt it would suddenly disappear. I wouldbe lots more comfortable to test if he was at least the right weight for his age, instead of people asking me how many weeks old he is. Yes, i still have people telling me he looks like hes only a few days old.

As soon as we switched ot the lactose free formula he started bulking up. His rib cage is not hardly visable! YAY!. He was still in the smallest size nappies you could get, the grip tabs overlapped and they were too big around the legs so they didnt really hold anything in. Now the tabs dont even come close to touching and they hug his bum (he has one now!) So its great to see an improvement. He also got a routine happening which is fantastic! (not the mummy getting out of bed to start her day at 5 am part, but the fact that hes predictable now!)

Now onto the liam monster.

He has had a very educational few weeks. He can say just about anything you throw at him. his latest being 'not fair', 'shush, on the phone' not to mention all the other ones like helping, kiss, cuddle, and the adorable love mum, love dad. He also lvoes to say all better. He kisses his own 'ouchies' (he hasnt really hurt himself but is after attention when he has been sent to his room) and says all better. This is a bit gross, because they are always on his feet, but its really cute to see him lift his foot up and kiss it better. Any really ouchies we kiss better for him.

He is also fascinated by money. Empties my purse at every chance he gets. I let him keep my 20c peices, and put them in his money box when he has finished playing with them. he doesnt put things in his mouth, which is good. He just likes to carry it around and tell us that he has monies. He also has a favourite shell. Its just some plain shell we picked up at the beach, but he loves it.  he loves when daddy does magic tricks with it too.

He has taken up a passion for drawing. we curbed the drawing on the walls by simply leaving some paper and crayons out for him to use in the morning. This hasnt been so much a problem since Kody's routine got into place and mummy started getting out of bed at an ungodly hour. He also comes into our room at around 5 am now, instead of all through the night when kody woke him up. he comes in when kody wakes up, gives me a kiss and puts his blankie on the floor and lays on top of it. when kody has had his bottle that daddy graciously wakes up to make for me we then go out and get me and liam some brekky and we havea lovely day. Daddy of course needs his sleep and gets a sleep in for a few more hours. Liams drawing also extends from the paper. he has drawn on our lovely ( however scratched scuffed and worn they may be) timber floor. nothing major,. comes off with spray and wipe and hardly noticeble at all. The newest one is drawing on his leg. and boy does he decorate it. From nappy to toe and even underneath. Its just like daddys picture on his leg... except daddys isnt blue or pink or green or spotted....

anyway... thats all for now.... hope you all have a fantastic day, an awesome week and an absolutely wonderful holiday.

***Remember, Children will become what you beleive of them!***