Family Support

Ok so this post is a bit of a sooky one :).
I am straight up very lucky to have such an awesome family whether they are blood relation or family because I choose them to be.
I just want to say THANK YOU for supporting me in everything I do, whether it's making huge life changing decisions or needing a rant and a rave about something you have all been there for me.

For those of you who have don't know, I have quite a few family members lurking on Facebook and a few on Twitter. I guess they keep an eye on me to make sure I'm not talking about them or checking to make sure they aren't missing out on any family gossip lol but mainly they have been suppportive in the things that I am and have been doing. This blog for one.
I can name at least 3 Aunties off the top of my head that will read this and probably be wondering why I'm sucking up, what do I want (lol) and and one very special Nanny to Miss T who has been supportive in more ways than she will ever know who is probably thinking that she hasn't done anything special (You have so accept it!!!! lol).

So THANK YOU again. It means the world to me.
Love you all :)
Anyway enough of the sooky.
You can go back to your weekend now

D

The Weeklies - Number 1

This Week - 24/03/12 till 30/03/12

Welcome to the first of "The Weeklies" :)
So here we go :)

My highlight of the week was - Lying down with Miss Midget on her bed reading stories before bed was pretty cool this week. We are very lucky Missy enjoys reading and her books :).

My low point of the week was - Being exhausted wasn't fun. Almost fell asleep on the couch yesterday afternoon :(.

My favourite time wasting device or application was - Star View And Star View Free - awesome application and actually educational :). Basically it works by using your phone/ipod/ipad whatever as the telescope. You point it round the sky and it will tell you what the planets and stars are called. The paid for App shows a few more statelites and shows you the planets. I'm dying to take it camping with me as it shows you the constellations and things as well. Yes I know this app is very nerdy but it's pretty cool all the same lol.




My favourite website this week was - Stuff.co.nz - This is one of my favourite news sites. It is one of my must reads in the mornings. Normally scan the headlines, national news and entertainment sections. Have been reading the technology section to (Yeah I really am a big geek huh, this does explain rather a lot about my high school experience but thats a whole different story lol).

So go check it out. The Oddstuff section can be quite amusing to :).

My favourite photo -

I'm loving this photo at the moment. Yeah I know it was more for last week than it was this week (Yay for good weather this week).



Saying of the week - So my saying of this week has been :)

Well thats it. Feel free to tell me what you think, Anything you would recommend and stuff like that.

So will post something later on but till then have a good weekend :)

Miss Midget's Vivid Imagination

Haha sounds like it could be a story book for kids :)
Lately I have been watching Miss and the way she has been playing and what happens when she's sleeping. Those who are friends of mine on facebook will be quite used to the posts like the one the other night - "So my rather imaginative crazy child is running round the house "rescuing" her little dolls house puppy with her "super hero" Barbie's that she got from McDonalds." and a rather interesting one "So Taylas sleep talking went like this tonight "help.........help me........help", went in and checked and sound asleep like a good little starfish. Funny child :)"

Ok so it's getting clearer by the day that Miss has a wicked imagination. It runs wild while she is awake and am pretty sure it rules her dreams as well. The help me post has a bit of a follow on where later that night we were going to bed and Miss started this funny little whingy cry. I went into check on her and she was on the floor with her blankey around her. I picked her up and spoke softly and was immediately clung to. I managed to prize her off me and snuck out of the room with out her saying a word more. 2 seconds later the crying starts again. By the looks of it she'd woken up as I'm pretty sure she wasn't awake when she was on the floor, we relented and gave her a little bottle to calm her down back to sleep. I asked Daniel whether he'd heard a thud or anything to indcate that she'd fallen out of bed and he hadn't. So at this stage popular theory is she got herself out of bed sleep walking.
While this isn't a totally new thing for Miss (She used to migrate round the cot in her sleep) it does make me thankful that she can't reach the door handles yet.

It later went through my head thoughts of wonder to what she was dreaming. She never said anything the next morning so it was just left at that.
The other day I got her up from a sleep and She said to me "Where are your antlers Mummy?"
"I don't have antlers baby"
"Yes you do, on your back"
"No darling I don't"
"I have antlers on my back"
"No darling, Were you having funny dreams baby?"
"Hmmmmm" she said with a thoughtful look on her face and that has been all thats mentioned about that.

Now watching her play when she's awake is just as amusing. I even get to join in like today where she was pretending she was having a party on the deck for her and all her friends (Barbie, Super hero barbie, all the Dora's that we have and even Mummy and Daddy from the Dolls house).
I of course had to come to and help set up. She wanted a Picnic party so we lay one of the blankets out on the deck for and she placed her guests where she wanted them and gave everyone a plastic tea set cup and a saucer. I think I was the only one that was served any food (I got the plastic corn on the cob lol). I did try leaving a couple of times as my attention was required else where but I kept getting dragged back :).

Guess this is all part of having a little girl (At least the awake part, the sleeping side of things well we'll see how long that lasts, I see us having to make sure we're got bolts on doors to keep her in).
I do remember doing things similar to my Nana when I went to her house in the afternoons and weekends :)

D

I have had an idea :)

Yes an idea, most probably not a great idea and I'm pretty sure it's been done before to death but oh well I'm sure I'll soon get told :).

I have been thinking about something that would be good to do at least once a week.
So have thought of a post called "The Weeklies"
This would incorporate my -
Highlight of the week was,
Low point of the week was,

Favourite time wasting device or application was
Favourite website this week was, 

Favourite photo (whether it's mine or someone elses) -
Saying of the week -  

That sort of thing,  That way I can  update the blog semi regularly etc :).


Whether thats something you guys are interested in I dunno.
It's most probably the lamest idea but oh well we'll run with it for now, I'm happy being lame lol :)

So we'll see how we go and if people read it and go from there.
If you have any ideas please feel free to let me know :).


Will try and do one every Friday :)


D

Getting people to read my blog????

I was thinking about it the other day after I posted my pinterest blog  and my epilepsy purple day blog  as I watched the stats to see if people actually cared what I had to say.
As silly as it sounds I got all excited when I saw that both these posts have been read about 30ish times each. It doesn't seem like much in the whole scheme of things but in the history of my blog that was heaps (The last time I had anything even remotely near that was my rant and rave I had last year lol).

So as I said I've been thinking about how to get people to read this thing and googled "how to get people to read my blog" which came up with a whole pile of interesting things. Mainly they all say "write consistently" (failed that one huh), another is finding your niche and writing specifically them to them (that would be fine if I knew who my niche were, at present it appears to be family and friends).

There's a whole pile if other things like making sure your design is right and links work etc but it has got me thinking "why am I writing this thing and do people really care?"

I like writing this thing. It puts my opinion out into the world and gets whatever in my head out and shared - Of course I had to share my pinterest stuff. Anyone that has been around me lately knows I'm crazy over that site and constantly showing people stuff from it (Lastest victim was my Aunty, I'd like to think she enjoyed the stuff I was showing her but did occur to me maybe she was just being nice lol).

I also figure it's up to you guys  if you want to read it or not but would be nice if more people did :).

So please feel free to use the comments section below any of my blogs. Would be nice to generate a little interactiveness on this thing even if you have something you think I would like and want to share with me thats cool :).

Alrighty enough ramblings :)

Talk soon

D

Oh the time that could be wasted on Pinterest

I must of spent hours and hours on this site.
Someone said it perfectly. It's the site you go to to decorate rooms you don't have and dress children that may or may not have been born yet, plan trips to places you will never go  on and to get ideas for craft stuff that you are probably not going to do but know where to find them if you ever get around to it.
As you may of guessed from a previous post I have spent a fair bit of time dreaming on that site. I have always said that I love the way the internet is expanding the way people dream. This site is brilliant for that. Finding craft ideas I didn't think possible and things that are just awesome.
If you want to to nosey through my boards click here - Pinterest.
My favourite ones at the moment are "Sayings" , "Awesome Ideas" and "Things to do with Tayla"

This site is brilliant for passing the time or for giving inspiration. It gave me the inspiration to make the present for my friend which I mentioned earlier here but also some of the sayings in here have given inspiration for life, some even got pinched and shared on facebook :).

I like the way it works. That you can trawling on the net and go "oh I love that" and instead of bookmarking the site you can pin it to one of your boards on Pinterest and you know where to find it. All the pictures pinned go back to their original site so you can then figure out where people found things or carrying looking where you left of.

It reminds me of cork boards and pinning your dreams on one of them (I used to blu tac photos and pictures to my wardrobe door :)).

This place has links to all sorts. I actually found a whole pile of cool free font the other day.
Theres also a space where you can share handy tips with people. I have found so many helpful "just in case" tips like this and this or this

Anyway I'll keep you posted as to what I try next and the result. We'll see how we go from there. Also if you check out Pinterest and my boards I take no responsibllity for the amount of time that will be spent dreaming :).

D

Purple Day for Epilepsy 26th March 2012

Ok so thought I'd mention this to you guys - Purple Day

Now for those who don't know, Miss Midget started having epileptic fits when she was 6mths old (I think it was around then).
Our first one was rather scary, as my friend over at The South African Kiwi will confirm.
Miss and I had just gotten to Renettes house. She was looking after her for the day for me while I went to work. Her mother Char normally looked after her for me but couldn't that day. This was the first time I'd left Miss with Renette so I was running through all our routine etc. Missy was still in her capsule (Missy was prem so was in a capsule carseat for a long time). As Renette and I talked Miss sat there. Next minute Renette noticed that Missy was not right. She had turned blue and her head was shaking, and eyes had rolled back in her head. At this stage I freaked. We pulled her out of the car seat. Now from memory Renette took over while I tried to keep it together enough to ring 111. I managed to get out that my daughter was having some sort of fit and then burst into tears on the poor operator. Pieter, Renettes husband took over the phone conversation for me from there. I think then on I was pretty useless.I'd like to think I would of been of more use if it had just been me by myself. I had the luxury of falling apart due to having wonderful people who saw that I had no idea what was happening and were awesome enough to take control of the situation. I really and so glad that they were there for me that day.
All I remember from there is waiting outside for the ambulance to come - Thank god it was only about 2mins away and then Missy and I got our first ambulance ride up to the hospital. 
We pretty much spent the day in hospital while they did test etc.
As I keep saying we are lucky as Missy only had 5 seizures all up. They diagnosed her (after a million and 1 tests) and we went on medication for 1yr. Now Missy is 2 almost 3 and seems to of grown out of it. We do get the odd occasional partial seizure (blank spots).
To me the whole experience really opened my eyes a) to people living with epilepsy and b) to the parents and people close to them.
At the time I was sure it was the stuff nightmares are made of and I had no idea about how Missy was feeling. I knew she was scared everytime they happened but that was about it. I found that epilepsy is more common than you think and that people deal with it and you wouldn't even know. I was lucky that I had a great support network who were able to help us through it.
I just watched this video Cory and Amie Jane talk about epilepsy and could relate to the Epilepsy isn't who you are, it's just what you've got scenario.

After going through all that with Missy I know for one thing, I have a strong little girl is not going to let her epilepsy stop her. She's now a awesome bright and bubbly child who wants to know everything.

I am now going to go through my wardrobe to see if I have anything purple for Friday. I hope you do to :)
(Obviously I've missed pieces of Missy Epilepsy story out. Not cause I don't want to share them, just don't remember half of that 1st seizure. I think my brain blocked some of it out)

About this weather.........

So have been stuck at home the past couple of days. Not feeling the greatest.
Miss Midget hasn't been feeling that crash hot either so we've hidden at home.
Away from the storm which has been nice. (Dunno if you've seen the Weather out here in Whangarei but we've been having lots of fun - Northern Advocate )

So as you can imagine I have seen lots of Dora and Mickey Mouse being at home and am starting to go a little crazy. While it has been nice sitting snuggled up with my daughter while it's been yuk outside I'm looking forward to feeling better and getting back to reality.

We also had fun with the garage almost flooding. Wouldn't of been so bad if my boxes hadn't been in the part where it wanted to flood so was on towel duty yesterday. I can't believe how much water ended up in the big bucket just from wringing out towels.

So have been thinking that maybe I should have some sort of theme going with this blog instead of my random ramblings, Haven't decided on one yet so until then you'll have to put up with them :)

Have discovered a renewed interest in Pinterest , So many things I want to make. Just need the $ to go and do them.

Loving the Naughty stool idea and cloud lights. Oh and one I am dying to try is Glow Jar.
So many neat ideas to do with Miss Midget to when I find time.

Have tried this one - Bubble Snake at a friends house and the girls loved it.
I also did a version of this - Inspiration Stones for a friend for her birthday.

See

Not the best of photos but I got the Chinese marbles and due the symbols for peace, love and happiness on them. This present was great as it fitted in my budget and I got to give my friend a box of peace, love and happiness in a box thats her favourite colour :).

Anyway will keep you posted if I try anything else out.

Take care.

D

So the past few months............

So yeah I've been gone awhile (Naughty Donna).
Sorry :)
So I'm back now.

Update on Miss Midget on her lump - So I tried using this thing on my phone and accidently deleted the post about Miss Midget and her lump.
Just to recap so we're all on the same page. Last May Missy had a lump on her face develop, in front of her left ear by her jaw.
We went through 6wks of the doctor saying that it was a infected lymph node. Strange thing is this lump would change. It would be little (size of a pea) one day then a couple days later would be the size of an old NZ 50c. The antibiotics didn't work and after the 6wks we got refered to a ENT specialist. Sweet as. He had a ultrasound done and MRI and a biopsy done. The MRI and Ultrasound showed that the lump had it's own blood supply and blood vessels etc. The main thing that came out of all those tests was that it wasn't cancer (YAY - such a horrible thought to have going through your head and such a relief to hear that it was benign).

We ended up being refered to Starship Childrens hospital in Auckland. We've been to see them 2x now, the last time being in February. They have called it a Vascular Malformation. The likelihood of it going away by itself is unfortunately slim. On the bright side though it is more a cosmetic thing that anything and there is no urgency to remove it. They will look at removing it when she's older either by operating or by using 100% alcohol and injecting it into the lump to kill the blood vessels. These options won't be looked at until she's in her teens. So yay for having answers and having a wonderful team of support people and doctors and having a plan.

So other news..............Um not really a lot to tell. I go to work and I come home and play with Miss Midget. Life is good at the moment :).

Will write again soon :)

D

The Lump when it first came up. I think this photo is when it was at 10wks

This photo was taken a few weeks ago. so we're talk about 10mths since it first came up