Happy 4th birthday, dear Boo

"I am an onlooker on my daughter's dance, which I made possible because she came through me . . . I'm not a part of her dance. Yet whenever she takes pause and needs someone to talk to, I am there. But that special dance with the child and the future is hers."

Liv Ullman

And just exactly how is it, my darling girl, that the resemblance between you and your little sister grows rather than shrinks the further she gets from her own baby-face days? It warms my heart yet tears at me so much. I am so thankful to have you in my life. And this year for the first time, can truly see the acceptance I have come to - of losing you from our daily physical lives - and all that this entails.

On the 13th, we will take time to pause and reflect, you can be sure of it. Just the three of us.

I am just so very very fortunate to have been given the opportunity to grow from knowing you. My beautiful, beautiful forever baby girl.

All my love,
Your Mummy

If it wasn't for Scraps

I feed him...

And taunt him with my sandwich

But seriously, Mummy, Scraps is soooooo darn funny that...

... *snoooooooooooooore*

And the mystery spot izzz....

For several months now, the LGBB has been sporting some pretty hefty-looking blisters on her bott. Like full-on, bursting, sometimes bleeding, blisters. Really, really strange. Then all of a sudden, they'll go away, only to come back raging. It flares up and settles down with no noticeable rhyme or reason, sometimes accompanied with a related gut upset - so it's been a bit difficult to manage, you could say.

I've tried various singular and combined methods, ruling out new foods, not enough free-to-air time, the way I wash my cloth nappies. Yada yada yada. Tried homoeopathics, my cure-all of choice. Eventually, the homoeopath admitted defeat with this one and advised me I should just "go and get some bloody anti-biotics", for he loathes them as much as I.

So, tail between legs, we went to the doctor who adamantly announced it was a Staph infection. We left his office, armed with a prescription and the instruction to call back in three days to obtain results of swabs he'd taken - we were to start the meds immediately (the infection was quite acute at this point, in the scheme of it coming and going). I asked what the point of taking the anti-biotics would be if we didn't actually know at this stage whether we were treating what he only *thought* it was. But I was assured that not only was he 99.9% sure it was Staph, that if it wasn't then the a/b's wouldn't be making it "much" worse. Oh. Ok. Goody then? (I think).

So when Steve phoned for the results early last week, it shouldn't have been much of a surprise that the doctor's .1% margin of error won out. She doesn't have a Staph infection. We had to go back again, at which time he looked at the sores again - nothing much had improved, after a week of guzzling this medication which, whilst the LGBB is a "medi" lover since age dot (where her usual homoeopathic pillules, Brauer's teething liquid, etc. etc. is known in this house as "medi"), has been useless. Greaaaat! So not only has she been taking the a/b's which I do so try and avoid (in fact, this is her first course of anything), it's been for the wrong friggen diagnosis!

Doctor now says, sitting in his office and "confused that not Staph, in fact NOTHING, grew from the swabs I took", he believes without a doubt that this is a bacterial infection after all. We leave his office, once again armed with another prescription, this time for an anti-bacterial cream.

Well, the LGBB has had this lathered on her for a week now and there's been some slight improvement, for which I am very relieved. Don't get me wrong, the horrible sores have gone and it is now just a couple of persistent crater-looking spots that were in danger of becoming infected (which those treating her all unanimously said was something they did NOT want to happen - no kidding!). So these have now become, well I guess you could say, dormant. But this is nothing new in the scheme of how we've come to understand this particular whatever-it-is. We've seen them do this before. Our instruction was to use the cream for a week and come back if not "all clear". Well it's not all clear so I guess we go back.... but for what? So he can guess again? Cripes.

So I'm no closer to finding out what it was, in order to treat any recurring bouts again in future. It was a pretty sloppy stab-in-the-dark method of treatment, if you ask me (look, it's not that I don't like doctors, I just think they guess and prescribe sometimes a little too hastily and you could say 'give them a break' on that one, but really.... I've had my share of doctors in my life and since going routinely, or first call, to a homoeopath instead of a doctor, I've been stunned at how powerful this modality is - call me a zealot, dear reader, I don't mind!)

And I guess the LGBB is obviously a lass who will just have various skin "things" in her life, if her first 17 months are anything to go by.

My reputation precedes me

You know, it's not often I get concrete evidence that a stranger has come away from meeting me and is changed even in some small way by our story.

The last time that truly happened was when Ella's longest-running nurse, a really sweet young girl called Jade, ran after me in the halls of the hospital when I had mustered up the nerve to go back to visit (looking heavily pregnant with Lolly by that time) - I was there anyway, for foetal monitoring, such was the LGBB's blasé existence in the womb - and she caught me by surprise and said "I THOUGHT it was you! What happened?" She went on to explain she'd been on days off when Ellanor had passed away and she had always wondered what events led up to her (quite sudden, in the scheme of things) death, for they were not expecting her to die and certainly not on that day.

Well today, an even less likely candidate has left an emotional lump in my throat. I've just dusted off the business card of the tradie who did our electrical wiring for the memorial pond Steve and I built with our bare hands in 2004. This guy came and did the wiring for the pump and lights and he also came back to wire up the new kitchen in December 2005.

I didn't think he'd remember us, but he interrupted me and said he remembered the job well. One thing I do distinctly recall feeling kind of uncomfortable (for him) about was the fact that Ella's nursery was still all set up as it was the day I'd gone into labour. I suppose for some it was bizarre that it remained set up almost two years later. We installed a ceiling fan in our room and one in that nursery/spare room (Steve's and my thoughts were that we had to keep "living the dream", that one day we would be bringing a baby home and seeing as we had no plans to move and nowhere to store all of the furniture even if we had taken it all apart, we may as well keep it set up as it was).

And I do recall my heart skipping a beat after Dean left, when I wandered in to the nursery and saw the post mortem photo of Ella sitting neatly on the bookshelf where I had left it, unable to put it away but unable to look at it in the main part of the house either....

I guess maybe that could make us more memorable than I'd assumed we might otherwise be to a passing tradie.

And when I organised his services again today for some more electrical stuff we need done at the new place, he tentatively asked, "Did you have the baby?" I assured him that, yes, the Bliss Bomb was most definitely in our lives. He sounded relieved, "I wasn't sure if I should ask," he blurted. Mind you, the baby he was asking after was the one we ended up having to terminate at 10 weeks - I had been about 8 weeks pregnant at the time and had thought, seeing as I'd probably not require him for any more electrical type stuff at this place, it was safe enough to sort of "round off" our story and tell him I was expecting again. Given, I mean, that he knew we had lost Ella (hence the pond, the empty nursery, the photo, the weepy housewife, you know all those give-aways).

I guess he'll mentally calculate that I either have the gestational period of an elephant or we lost that bub too. It doesn't really matter. The point is, he remembered us enough to ask the question. And I think that is entirely heartwarming that he cares and was obviously touched. It's lifted my day no end.

And STEP two, three, four

In the closing days of October last year, the LGBB made her first crawling movements. She was about 15 1/2 months.

A couple of days before Christmas, she discovered her feet were made for walking - but only if Mummy or Daddy held her hands.

And yesterday, after her midday snooze, she seemed to have woken full of determination NOT to move from her spot unless it was to WALK from it! Which was kind of tragic to watch, given the fact that she hasn't actually mastered it yet nor would she let us help her anymore. Oh dear.

So we had our first legitimate-reasoned red-faced frustrated toddler tanty. It was so sad! But so funny. The way she crunched her little body over, fists tight, neck taut, a gutteral wail in her throat, all in the name of doing it herself. She wanted to get over to that ball so badly. But each time she went to stand, she couldn't get her hands off the ground and was stuck in an A-frame position. Whump! Back down to her bum. Angry tears. Then she'd start to crawl to it and throw herself on the ground, as if to say "Nooooo!!! I don't WANNA crawl anymore!"

Looks like Daddy picked a good week to quit going to work (for the holidays). Think I'm going to need some backup.

Asking the important questions

Like...

Why does Alicia Keys look like she has to go to the toilet in that new film clip of hers?

It's strangely mesmerising, watching her writhe around on that lone chair. I'm impressed by her gorgeous eyes and face, that naturally beautiful hair, how she can somehow pull off wearing the most unbecoming off-white skin tight number despite not being a skinny girl - very healthy, she looks*. But why the very staccato mode of "dancing" around her keyboard she appears to have invented?

What is going on with her dancing? I really do think the poor girl needed to have a bathroom break but fear they may not have let her and she was doing take after take all day... until they got a music video that looks for all the world like poor Alicia can't uncross her legs.

She looks mere seconds away from doing a Kelly Pritchard.


* I can channel Yoda now, it seems

Up and down like a bride's nighty

.... as my dear Grandma used to say about anyone who couldn't make up their minds (or was flitting about, up and down, indecisive).

Well, that's me. I'm a bride's nighty. The blog's private, it's not. It's called this, it's called that. You can feed via RSS, you can't.

To my ever-faithful small legion of readers who have been with me (pretty much all of you) from the start, I apologise that I did not see this sooner. But it's only been after a firm sisterly talk with, well, one of you whom I hold most dear, that I see I really am not being responsible. Still! And here I was, thinking that by keeping my nose out of trouble/head in the sand/eye on the prize, I was doing all the right things. But no.

It would appear that a steadily increasing case of writer's block is stifling me. My creativity is at a low point - could be because it's being TRICKED, yes tricked, into thinking its only current outlet is painting (that bloody house, will it ever be finished and painted??? I swear, it was possibly one of the LGBB's first words, painting) - and so, I have actually done the worst thing by shutting off any refreshing newness in closing this down and making it private.

I think I went in the complete wrong direction back a month or so ago. Instead of going private, I think I ought to have gone public. Hmmmmmmmm. And here's me, trying to convince myself of my fledgling, awakening intuitive abilities. Yuh. Uh huh.

It's kind of like, I was on the precipice of stopping it altogether. But like my obsession with iced coffee, it's been with me too long now to just sever the connection. September 2005 I started this thing. It has been an important outlet in my life, I've nurtured it, it's nurtured me. As have you. But suppressing my urge to purge was not what I expected to happen with changing it to a private blog. I'm sorry for messing around (and no, your email addresses have not been sent to any telemarketers, I promised you that before).

So, there you have it. The old one's in the Links at the side there, if you are reading this new blog, are new to it and want to know .... "But what happened before she became bitter and twisted and paranoid?"

It's all there, pretty much.

I have too many very loyal readers who relied previously on RSS feeds to alert them of the latest bit o' drivel. And so, to placate them (as much as anything else, as I do so heartily appreciate their reading), I am switching off the lock-down-shut-down-smack-down mode. And sticking with the new blog, which I do still love. It looks much neater. Probably because it hasn't been sullied yet with my ramblings.

But I'll still be me. Rest assured.