Cayley still naps at three and a half, but it doesn’t mean she has to be happy about it. This week she came out several times one day for this reason and then that. Finally she came out and said she couldn’t sleep because the door was closed.
“It needs to be closed Cayley,” I said.
“But Mum, I reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally want it open.”
“Okay then,”I relented.
So she went back to her room, closed the door and fell asleep.
I’ve just had a look back through my archives and have realised that I didn’t ever blog about a fairly major thing that happened with Elisha a couple of years ago.
From memory it all started in May 2008, when Brett and I both became concerned about Elisha’s left eye turning significantly when he was looking at close objects.
We took him to our local optometrist, who then referred us on to another optometrist and a paediatric ophthalmologist. The wait for an appointment was quite a while. I remember that we saw the optometrist first. We’d decided to take Elisha for his appointment and then to Scitech as a special treat. Well, he (the optometrist) thought he could see something wrong with Elisha’s eye, but wanted to get a closer look at it, and was going to have to dilate his pupils. We made an appointment for later in the afternoon so that we could still go to Scitech.
I remember being at Scitech, but not really being there, worrying about what it might have been there in Elisha’s eye.
Eventually we went back, Elisha had the drops put in his eyes, and we wandered around for a while waiting for them to take effect.
The optometrist had seen something.
This is what a normal retina looks like…
This is what Elisha’s looks like…
It is a very rare defect of the eye, called Wyburn-Mason syndrome. Basically some of the blood vessels in the eye are thicker than they should be. Most of the people we dealt with had never seen it before, only Dr Lam had, and only once. Which meant that they were all quite excited by it in some ways.
He had to have an MRI to make sure that it didn’t extend into his brain in areas that could cause problems. It does go to his brain, but not into it, or not into any problematic places.
Elisha is never going to have great vision in this eye, but is also a little short-sighted, and has had glasses since he turned four. He has also had to patch. He HATES it. H.A.T.E.S. He is like two different people. Elisha with no patch and Elisha with patch.
Last year we tried some drops instead of the patch, so that he couldn’t cheat by pulling the patch open a little bit. He ended up having a reaction to the drops, and we stopped both those and the patching for a while. When we started up again, his vision was worse than ever. He even walked into things a couple of times when we first resumed. ?As much as possible he sits in a chair and does nothing.
I feel awful making him do it, because I can see by his actions how much it upsets him. Yet, it is for his (hopefully) long term benefit that we are pursuing it. I pray with him about it, and we had a big talk about it this last week. And he actually got off his chair and did a few things…
… including taking his bowl to the kitchen! I pray and hope that the wearing of the patch will improve his vision, and also that it teaches Elisha about persevering through tough circumstances.
When I’m on time with my morning routine, I feed Ookie quite early in the morning.
Something wasn’t quite right the other morning, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
Sometimes you have to stop and look a bit closer.
Remember I said that yesterday was ‘one of those afternoons’? Well it continued.
I packed up the left over tuna casserole, and put it in a container so Brett could take it to work today. It was still sitting on the bench when I got up this morning!
Then I went to the shops to pick up something that went on sale today, checked out petrol prices on the way… they’ve gone up 14c overnight!!!
And yet, I still have so much to be thankful for. I’m really enjoying journalling towards my Thousand Gifts, and will continue to update the page weekly on Monday or Tuesday.
Even though there are many frustrations and hardships in this life, when compared to spending eternity with God in perfection, they become much more like molehills than mountains.
Yesterday while dressing her…
Cayley was singing, I heard the word camel, but didn’t understand much else, so when she took a breath, I asked her to tell me about the camels.
Cayley: Not camels mama, Princess camels!
Me: Oh! What is a princess camel?
Cayley: It has a crown, sparkly bits and a dress at the back.
And later, when describing them to Gran, the attribute pink was added.
***
Last night while dashing out for tuna with Daddy…
Cayley: You can’t have any more birthdays.
Daddy: Why?
Cayley: You might break the roof.
Brett questioned and finally managed to work out that this was because you get taller on your birthday.
Can’t wait for the next installment!
I was making tuna casserole for dinner tonight. I put the rice in the rice cooker, made the white sauce, added the peas and corn, went to the cupboard… no tuna.
Packed together all my bits and bobs for Girls’ Brigade, put it in the car and off I toodled. Set up the sewing machine. No power cord/foot pedal. Not too bad, you think, except I did the same thing last week.
Driving home from Girls’ Brigade, almost out of fuel, pull into the petrol station, price at the pump is great. Going to fill my tank all the way up. I am so thankful I checked for my purse before I put the fuel in the car. No purse. Backed out, got a few stares, home.
Yes, it has been one of those afternoons!
Little Scrapbook Shop has had a facelift… a fun new look.
On Monday, I had to dash to the shops straight after picking Elisha up from school. Now I don’t know about all kiddies, but Elisha is famished after school. I told them before going in the shops that they could each pick a piece of fruit to have. They thought this was wonderful. We walked around the fruit section with careful deliberation.
I could have told you before she did, that Cayley would pick strawberries. They are her ultimate fruit. But Elisha, I had no idea which fruit he would choose. He went for pineapple. At first I told him no, because the beautiful display of the fruit had no price, and it not being something we buy too often I had no idea how expensive it might be. But there a little further along were more pineapples, and only $2.99 each.
Poor Jos didn’t get to pick anything, I decided a punnet of strawberries and a pineapple was enough. Plus I wasn’t so sure he wouldn’t go for something completely unknown to me like durian!
Once the purchase was made we rushed home to get stuck into some fruit. It was delicious.
Another special offer I heard about today. I have this book sitting in my car. It’s great for flicking through when you need inspiration for somewhere to go with the kids. When it only costs $15 to buy, it doesn’t take much to earn your money’s worth out of it!
