Mary's preschool photos!

Since I have not put many pictures up for a while, here is a sneak peak of Mary's preschool photo's. After they take the class photo's they take a lot of the kids individually, which I like. She did okay, but we are still working on not doing the "fake smile"

A few things about Mary: The other day she told me she did not like her name and she would rather be called Lilly Claireese, I said ok and called her that for the whole day! Mary is 4 years old, and this is her last year of preschool as she will be starting kindy next year!

hummm- she must have scratched her head right before this picture. Mary goes to preschool from 9:00-3:00 M-W, it is great! I get Thomas all to myself for three whole days while the girls are at school.

Sandwiches are hard this year. Mary can't have peanut butter at preschool due to other kids allergies, she can't stand Vegemite (an Aussie staple) and she pulls out the turkey/ cheese and skips the bread if I do that kind of a sandwich; therefore she gets the same thing everyday...tuna fish! Going on 10 weeks (hahahaha) and no complaints so far!!

Mary loves her class and she is extremely LOYAL to her friends. If I could think of one word to describe her that would be it.

In Australia you break for morning and afternoon tea. I have to pack a little sack for her tea time each day. Since we don't break for tea in the USA I have no idea what to pack. So far fruit and cookies work but yogurt merited a note from the teacher (oops).

Daddy is still Mary's favorite! She prefers him to almost anything else!

And the whole class, she is one of the tall kids In Australia the short kids always get the back row. I think she is the tallest girl in her class.

A glitch!

So after two weeks of craziness (first week was the operation and the second one was Olivia recovering at home with my family visiting for spring break). My church group came to help me out. They sent someone to help me with Thomas in the mornings for four days. The first day (Monday) Olivia woke up from a good nights rest and told me "I feel all better now" I was (1) happy and (2) embarrassed; because I had someone in my living room expecting Olivia to be resting in bed so she could help me around the house. I decided to swallow the embarrassment and told my helper Olivia was doing much better and that I was going to run some errands since I hadn't been out of the house for two weeks. I ran every errand I could think of only to have my new (used) car break down at the end. I dropped it off at a repair place and got a ride back home only to find Olivia pretty much doing cartwheels in the living room with every possible toy out on the floor (including the dress up, which Olivia told me she had climbed to the top of the closet to get by stacking chairs....what?) I asked my bbser/ helper how it was (She is an elderly Indian woman who was reading glamor magazines) and she said "I thought Olivia was supposed to be sick" :-) Me: trying to stammer a summary of the last two weeks while thinking 'It is going to take me until the late evening to clean up this mess from her bbsing these past two hours' Mmmmmmmmmm..........

The next three days I had helpers who were young college kids and that was fantastic for two reasons. (1) They drove me around to get groceries since I didn't have my car. (2) I got to see them hands on with my kids (for future bbsing purposes) and my house was clean and I even got some exercise in. I felt kind of like I was "abusing the privilege" and after Thursday called to cancel any more help because Olivia was doing just fine and so was I!

SO as Murphy's law would have it, Friday rolled in and I had no help on the way and Olivia woke up pale and with a fever and very lethargic. I got her into see a gp by 11:15am and the gp sent me to the emergency room ASAP. I dropped off my kids with a neighbor and spent from 2:00-8:00pm in the ER. We were seen right away (within 15 minutes) but then we were waiting for a bed in the public hospital to become available (I just learned the public hospital is the only hospital with Emergency facilities in Australia). This was my first time in Australian public facilities and lets just say "it is NOT like England (which I loved)".

We got up to our room by 10:00 pm. Olivia spent the night with a fever of 103; she had a kidney infection (right side this time), and YES even post operation (which was supposed to prevent infections) she will continue to have a higher chance of getting infections so long as her stints are in. (Those come out in May...) We shared a room with a 6 day old baby who had the flu, the mother was just sobbing from exhaustion and I didn't quite know what to tell her even though I had three kids and this was her first! The baby was later moved since she was contagious and by the morning they moved us again to a bigger room with 6 other people. I was kind of sad because after the baby was gone I had the previous room to myself... even though the light wouldn't turn off (O-what a night!)

Anyway, in our new room the nurse kept asking me if "Olivia was a princess" (note: I HATE princesses) so I of course was like NO and What exactly are you getting at? :-) .....In hindsight, maybe she was trying to be nice to me! Hahahaha! Well, Olivia wasn't doing well. She wasn't sleeping (partly, due to all the noise from the other patients) or eating (but I can't blame her as the public hospital food looks like dog food) and her fever was not going away even on fever reducers. She had a really hard time getting to the bathroom (in the public hospital there is only one in each wing) and so I kindly asked if we could go over to the private side since we were going to be here indefinitely. OK--maybe I am the princess! Our insurance covers 100% inpatient so to me we were covered public or private and so why not get your own room with a bathroom and good meals which are also given to the parents right? Think of Australian private hospitals like mini hotel rooms because that is what they look like (even with the toilet paper folded down!) We moved again and it was SO NICE! I love private hospitals and both Olivia and I got a good nights rest and she is doing so much better! Just this morning we took a walk alone through the private hospitals botanical gardens :-) Our goal is to be back home by Tuesday, we will see how she goes. I must admit thought, I am starting to prefer the hospital to my own house, I don't have to clean or cook and it is indefinite sleep and TV-Aaaaahhhh :-)

Stan took over for tonight so I am back home for now (yes, checking my email) but all is well. Ummm- I have to go, Mary has just lined up all our shampoo bottles onto our couch and is jumping on them to see how far they will squirt onto the carpet...no wonder Stan wanted a night out of the house (just kidding Stan!)

Olivia's Recovery

So lots of people have been asking how Olivia has been doing. She has been Ok and getting better. So far we have had some pretty weird things happen. For instance, when they took the catheter out of her (which was put straight through the front of her stomach) she started leaking blood and urine out of the hole in the front of her stomach instead of down and out of her bladder like most people when they wee. We had this last for about two days and went through every towel and bed sheet in the house. It finally stopped, but only after the doctor said "if it didn't stop another operation would have to be done"... Excuse me?

Saturday afternoon Olivia was discharged. My mom and sister and brother came to visit for one week (US Spring break) and flew down on Saturday morning. They got to see Olivia in the hospital and have been able to help me out at home in between sight-seeing. It is a bit difficult because their hotel is in the city so they have to take a taxi/ ferry or bus to get out to my house (since I can't drive them anywhere as I am home with Olivia). Stan had to go out of town this week for work so I haven't been able to join them like I had hoped. Instead I am by Olivia's bedside helping her walk to the bathroom, giving her meds, cleaning, and keeping the other kids out of Olivia's way (note: both Mary and Thomas have both managed to jump on her).

Night times have been rough, the first three days home Olivia woke up every 45 minutes to go to the bathroom, the second night was the same but we had an episode on the toilet from 11:00-1:00am. Finally, last night she slept in three hour increments (so its a real treat, which is funny b/c whenever I had a new born baby who would sleep for only 3 hours at a time I never thought I could make it).

Olivia has slowly progressed from only laying down to sitting up and now walking. She can't hold her urine so we have trails of blood/urine everywhere. Which is bad timing b/c the landlord just put in new carpet. We will probably get it cleaned after all this :-) Aside from difficulty holding her urine she is also in a lot of pain every time she wee's and will still have spasms in her bladder so I am very careful to make sure she gets her meds when they are due (we have about three bottles of stuff 2x's each all at different times throughout the day). With that said it should be noted that she is a lot better every day. She is making big improvements, so in a week or two I feel like she will be back to normal at the rate we are going, but still home from school because she is quite tender.

Amidst this recovery we have had some great things happen. Olivia's infant school (K-2) made her a box of cards (every kid from the whole school). You can imagine how long it took her to open all the pictures, she was delighted to see no one at school had forgotten who she was. A neighbor brought a cake over with lots of sprinkles and a mom from swimming brought over a dinner.

Here are some treats a family from church brought her

Olivia's Class (1W means Year 1 and W for mrs. Wong) each wrote on a circle and gave her a class gift....and a huge bucket full of cards.

Here is a card from Olivias kindy teacher! We seriously go to the best school!

here are some examples of the letters we got. We had over 100 which is about one or more from the whole school! Even the kindy and year two kids!

Mary has had a really hard time seeing Olivia get cards, stuffed animals, flowers and pictures. She got sent home from preschool on the one day this week I managed to organize a ride for her, because olivia is stuck in bed so I can't run any errands or even drop Mary off at school. Mary was sent home because she was "sick". When she came home she was fine, in fact she happily asked me where her "cards" were... I wanted to cry!!

Urethra re-implantation surgery!

On Tuesday Olivia went in for her urethra re-implantation surgery. She was very brave. Her operation wasn't scheduled until 12:00 noon so she was starving by the time she went in. She gave herself the sleeping gas and was out quick. The doctors gave her an epidural for pain and morphine for when she woke up.

The operation was three hours-- which took a bit longer than planned due to some complications. Apparently the reason she started getting UTI's after her operation in England was because one of the plastic bits that was clamped down on her urethra to stop the reflux, came off. This allowed the reflux to resume and caused a lot of scar tissue to build up around the plastic bits. The dr. had to remove the plastic and then operate with scar tissue build up which wasn't easy. As a result of the scar tissue he put stints in her urethra's to keep them open and the urine moving. These will come out in 6 weeks.

Currently Olivia has random tubes coming out of her stomach. A catheter, and the usual IV wires on her arms. She has to wear a diaper which is mortifying for a 6 year old. And because of the catheter and stints her bladder goes into spasms which are extremely painful for her to bear even with the morphine.

Due to the complications Olivia had to stay in the hospital for 5 days and is on recovery at home for 6 weeks. Stan has been off from work to help but it has been tricky juggling the hospital/ operation and getting a new (used) car (read previous post), and then all the usuals like taking care of the kids, preschool drop offs and pick ups and dinner etc... (note: Mary told me the other day that my dinner was so bad Jesus wouldn't even like it--I acted sad so I could go in the kitchen and laugh to myself!) Anyway, we finally found a car that will work and we pick it up at the end of the week.

Overall Olivia has been ok through it all with visits from the happy doctors (they blow up balloons and give you stick on tattoos etc...), the hospital school teacher, who gave her a packet of work for year 1 kids. She came back the next day and Olivia's home work wasn't done (oops) so she gave us an extra day. Olivia also has a TV/Movie/ Video game console in her room which has just about every game, or movie you can think of. And she has been showered with visits from friends and emails from family. She told me yesterday that "it doesn't count as a visit (someone seeing her) if they don't bring a present." She is a pretty good negotiator, I need to take some lessons before my family comes to visit!

Here Olivia is having her sitting up time...she is leaning on Stan because it hurts so much but doing a good job!

Everything is BREAKING!

If I could sum up the month of February in two words they would be "everything broke!" Some of it was still under warranty (because we have only been in this country for a year and four months now) but it was nonetheless frustrating to dig through my file cabinet and see if the warranty was 12 months OR longer and then to make phone calls, trips to the post office and function without the items. Here is the list of items the broke and had to be replaced this month.

(1) GPS (the sticky part that suctions to the window fell off and the gps fell down creating a crack on the screen that made it impossible to navigate where we were going). It was discovered that it didn't work while trying to get to a hospital appointment across the city (45 min drive) after pulling all my kids out of school and having no hope of rescheduling the dr. apt. The next day we got a new one and the warranty covered everything BUT cracked screens! (Now there's some fine print for you!)

(2) Girls Bed it is actually our third in a year, it just goes to show that the trundle part of the Ikea beds are NOT jump tested like they say! Luckily this was under warranty but seriously, do you have any idea what it is like getting partly assembled bed bits in your car (with three kids) to then drive to Ikea and stand in line to show the defect? This last time the helper guy was like "are you assembling this correctly because it is your third bed" I was thinking, how can I mess up with directions like these?

(3) DVD player (this is the second time as well (about 10 days apart in breaking). This was also under warranty but it is a 40 minute drive (EACH WAY) to the closest repair place and to drop it off and pick it up is a lot of my time. Plus, it is hard to get things done or maintain cleanliness without the dvd player since we are in an apartment and I can't send the kids outside to play in a yard etc... The only other option to play a dvd is the computer (which we just replaced in November....so I have my reservations). On the bright side, the toll was broken the second time I drove it back, nothing like saving some money!

(4) Air Conditioning (Under warranty again...but it probably shouldn't have been). I have to fill the AC up with water to make it blow COLD air. One day while Mary saw me doing this she decided to help and grabbed something out of the fridge to pour into the AC unit. IT WAS MAPLE SYRUP! The unit breaking was only a matter of time really, but the timing of it all is what made it unbearable. The month of FEB is equivalent to the heat of August in the US which means 40C or 101F. When the AC guy came to check it out he had to order a part which took another two weeks. After two more weeks of heat and limited sleep he finally came to fix it. AND the day he fixed the unit the temperature dropped (and has stayed that way) down to the lower 70's since then...meaning I don't need my AC any more :-)

(5) Vacuum cleaner. I shouldn't count this one because it broke before Feb but I replaced it in Feb so it should count towards my replacement expenses right?

(6) Plumbing-This one is funny. It was actually my neighbors plumbing but none of us in our apt. complex could use our water for a couple days. What was NOT funny was the fact that the pipe that broke (causing the pluming problem) was directly above MY garage (of course). I watched the water spraying out and started thinking,' if this floods my garage and everything in it I am going to be mad.' Then I thought, 'how on earth am I going to haul everything from our college text books to the Christmas tree up 6 flights of stairs before everything is ruined?' I decided to walk away and watch a movie and it turned out the plumbers came just in time!

(7) BOTH cars--and I mean the engine needs replacing! The first car we bought broke down three weeks later. We had to spend three times its value to tow it and fix it only to find out the engine needed replacing. One week later my car (in good condition and just getting old) started smoking and had the same story. This is a dilemma because the registration for my car expires in a week and Stan works out of town during the next week. So I need to go car shopping and I am not doing it with three kids and pushy car sales men. Originally we bought the cars thinking "we just need them to last three years" because that is when our visas run out. But we have ended up spending more in repairs on both than the actual value of the car.....ugh!

In fact, funny story--while driving this month, to get my DVD player fixed my speedometer went down to 0 while driving on the highway. So after dropping the dvd player off I spent the rest of the day paying $400.00 for my speedometer to get shipped out and then fixed, only to have the engine break about a week later!

With that said...we still have our cell phones! Knock on wood right?

Olivia update

So this week Olivia did all her pre-op tests for her operation in two weeks. She did great. We have been doing stuff like this for a while and this time around I had all sorts of epiphanies. For instance, Stan is an Olivia hog when it comes to hospital stuff. Every time she gets put under only one parent can be with the child, and Stan always goes. I think this time I let him go because he was getting so emotional and sensitive. He always gets teary eyed/ cries when she goes asleep. I say things like "hurry she's only out for 10 minutes lets go get some food" (Because we always have to be at the hospital so early and we never eat breakfast), then Stan will say something like "that is so insensitive, YOUR daughter is under and you want to run to the hospital cafeteria." It is true, all the other couples who's kids have been sedated are crying and holding each other and talking about feelings. I am not going to lie, it is sad... I think I would be sadder if I actually got to see it for once but on my end I say "see you soon" and then wait and then Stan comes out and that is it.

Olivia and I before she goes in to get put out

You know Stan is getting too sensitive when he goes down to the gift shop and buys books like "butterfly kisses" to read to Olivia when she comes out...this of course will only make him cry MORE.

Waiting....

Not going to lie, cool hats, and just about ready to go!

When Olivia started to come "out" the nurses started calling her the squirmer, because she kept inching off to the edge of the bed (a lot like a caterpillar), Stan seeing an opportunity for injury climbed into the bed to stop the wriggling and held her until she was coherent.

Olivia, NOT excited about he Vegemite sandwich option, but she had to eat and wee before she could leave so she ate it!

So a quick summary, Olivia had a VCUG done (we do these about once a year ) Here is a good explanation in case you are curious: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiding_cystourethrogram , and she also had a 3mm camera go up her bladder and urethra's to investigate the scarring and what the walls looked like and to see the size of the openings of her urethra's. The picture results and VCUG grade merited a procedure called a urethra re-implantation: http://www.ucsfchildrenshospital.org/education/ureteral_reimplant_surgery/index.html

Last year (in England) we had a sting operation, which was successful but the fluid was reabsorbed into her body and her reflux came back. Anyway, we have been meeting with urologists a lot, thinking this was the problem and that we were treating the cause but a week ago we had some exciting news after meeting with a gastroentologist and Olivia's "failure to thrive" (grow). He discovered that she is missing an enzyme to correctly break down poo and that her intestines are packed full (up to her stomach) which is why she doesn't eat (she feels full all the time). The gastroentologist also suggested that since her intestines are so full they may be pressing on her urethra's (behind her intestines) thereby making in difficult for her urine to drain, possibly even pushing it back up to her Kidneys.

It makes sense.... Breast milk has this enzyme and I nursed Olivia until she was 6 months old. Between 6-12 months she was on formula and baby food and was probably getting all clogged up. At her 12 mo apt she dropped in weight and 3 months later had her first urinary tract infection. The gastroentologist put her on a laxative for life (she takes about 1/8th of a full child's laxative/ day) and she can't eat certain food that are difficult to break down like potatoes, bananas etc... we meet back with the gastro guy in 4 months to look at her intestines and see how she is doing with weight gain. From this discovery Olivia has a good chance of developing bowl cancer (which we will be looking into) but overall the discovery is good news and we are excited to see her progress.

If you are thinking, "does she still need the operation on her urethra's if she clears out her intestines?" the answer is yes. This is what we were looking at while at the pre-op and due to the damage on her kidneys she needs something NOW to save her kidneys (because we don't want to get on a kidney transplant list) and it is going to take time to nurse her intestines back to normal. If you have questions email me, especially all my dr. friends.

Ps. Sorry it took so long to write the blog update I have had NO time. In fact while writing this Thomas took a green fabric marker to two rooms of the house and got the walls, windows, bedding, so consider this a special treat!

Chinese New Year

So this year Chinese New Year landed on Valentines day...and out of the two celebrations I think the Chinese New Year won! It is the year of the Tiger and apparently Australia celebrates Chinese New Year more than any other country outside of Asia. On New Years Eve we went down to Darling harbor and went through the Chinese Tea Gardens. They were magnificent and so peaceful even though they were positioned in the middle of the city, the trees really made you feel secluded.

I learned a lot about Chinese new year. For instance, it is a time to visit family and call relatives. The new year has to do with the lunar calendar so it landed on Feb 14th because that is the day of the new moon. The celebration lasts for a while (2 weeks?) until the moon has gone down some. On New Years Day the children will get dressed, eat and then come and bow before their parents. Their parents will give them advice for the upcoming year and then give them a "red envelope" this has money in it. Olivia has a bunch of friends who actively celebrate this and follow these traditions and she told me (New Years Eve) while I was washing the dishes how excited she was for her red envelope...I looked through my house and realized I only had white ones! Stan said he would still give her some advice if she wanted :-) Next week we are watching the dragon boat races and going to the Chinese twilight parade...and will see all the fireworks set off, it should be cool! Plus my neighbor is taking me into China town to eat Yum-cha (I don't have a clue how to spell it, but that is what it sounds like).

It was so easy to forget that it was also Valentines day. The schools do not do any activities for Valentines day and the stores don't really hype it up. Stan still pulled out all the tricks by ordering me flowers and chocolates! Thanks Stan!

Little Olivia

So in case you didn't know Olivia has not been doing too well as of late. Quickly I will rewind her medical history to bring you up to date. Olivia was a pretty normal sized (7.6lbs), healthy kid when she was born. During her 12 mo check up she had a sudden drop in her growth (usually you have a positive curvilinear growth pattern) and she suddenly took a negative linear pattern...not even a small curve. Her pediatrician thought it was so weird he had her have a bone x-ray to see if she would be able to grow normally. The tests came out fine but three months after that, she had her first urinary tract infection. This was routinely investigated by a VCUG which showed she had reflux in both of her urethra's (her urine goes back up to her kidneys instead of down to her bladder), but there was no scaring on her organs so the doctors wanted to wait to see if she could grow out of it. By the time she was three she was having lots of UTI's and her reflux grade had moved from moderate to severe; not to mention she was on the strongest and most expensive (I might add) preventative medicine available, which she was taking on a daily basis.

Olivia with a UTI on her three year old birthday. Day one (grumpy face) and day two doing her (an attempted smile) IV treatment.

When she was 4 we moved to England, they took one look at her and scheduled her for an operation. It was the best medical experience I have ever had. The hospital was absolutely beautiful, the doctors were great and they gave her something (for free) that our US insurance companies had been dodging for a while, hoping she would grow out of it! At the end of the operation she no longer needed the medicine and she had no more reflux. However, she did have scarring on her left kidney due to the multiple infections while in America and the first part of England. We were Ok with this because you really only need ONE kidney and the right one was still scar free!

Everyone told me scary stories about the British medical system...I would have to say I disagree!

Only a little scaring on the left side!Right after her sting operation (almost two years later from pictures up above)

Anyway, one year later we moved to Australia and Olivia started to get infections again. We had to wait a while to get an appointment, but we were able to get hooked up with the top pediatric urologist at a private hospital in Bondi to check out the problem post operation. He ran some tests and we did some scans and found out that her right kidney is now damaged as well. Today I went in and we decided that she needs to be back on preventative medicine so she doesn't further damage her kidneys AND he is suggesting we do a re-implantation operation (where you cut off the urethra's and re-attach them to the kidneys so they drain the urine instead of shoot it back up). We are going into the hospital in one week for another consultation/ evaluation and then should be doing the pre-operation tests in two-three weeks. For this, Olivia will be under anesthetics and they will be taking a camera up her bladder, through her urethra's and into her kidneys. They will also be doing a VCUG to see if her reflux has come back.

On a side note, since all this started to happen, Olivia has not been able to gain weight. Mary is two years younger and is the same height and weighs more that Olivia does. Olivia is well below the national growth charts (weighing in at 35 lbs at 6 years old) and the ice cream, hot dogs, and protein shakes "diet" just don't seem to work. We are also working with another pediatric gastroenterologist to see if she is not absorbing her food, but that is a side hypothesis. I talked to the Doctor about Olivia's growth and he told me after we correct the reflux she should start growing again! He said he has seen small child after small child time and time again and they always start growing once the problem is corrected--so here is hoping... we should have everything done before May-keep you posted!

Brunette

So there are some funny things that happen in Australia when it comes to me and hairdressers. I don't know if it is my accent or what but I can NEvER convey what it is that I want done...in fact it is usually the opposite. For instance, I am a blond and have been my whole life but I still get highlights done to bring out the light blond I lost during childhood. My hair is a honey blond NOT barbie blond and whenever I get highlights done I say "DO NOT MAKE ME A BARBIE DOLL" and the Asian ladies nod, smile and make me a Barbie doll (see picture below).

Ok, see the roots, honey blond in this pix...that is all I want...not too hard right?

After about 6 times wrong, I said "I want to go DARKER!" I want my hair the color of my roots (not lighter) because I don't want to have to do this all the time. I say this and no one listens to me. However this time my hairdresser was Italian (not Asian) and she said--yes, yes, dark hair is very beautiful! I am thinking, good--she understands. So, 45 minutes later I am dark dark Brunette/dark red...a little too red...almost purple red. I didn't like it but it was explained to me later that the only way to get it OUT was to use bleach on my hair to get the color out (and who knows what color my hair would be then) and then dye it on top. I opted to NOT bleach the hair but instead to experiment on a few strands to see what would happen. The result was light brown highlights to try to break up the red and I have decided it is fine...a change from blond. Stan likes it and informed me that he dated more brunettes than blonds anyway...really? Well then , the only real problem will be in three months when it grows out :-)

Note: since going brunette, my hair has lightened up a lot and I like it, the red has even faded quite a bit. I wish I had pix to show you the improvement but this is it 1 month later!