Dentophobes....look away now!

There has been plenty that has been going on in our lives over the past couple of weeks, and I have been remiss not to get on here and update. BUT.......I have been suffering from toothache for a couple of weeks now and it is just about to hit the jackpot!!!!!

Before Christmas, I went for my usual 6 monthly checkup and I had a crack in one of my molars. A return visit to my dentist - the lovely Peter - saw him drill what seemed the majority of my tooth away and replace with what can only now be described as a pretend tooth. This took an hour and at one point, I was sure that I would have to get the nurse to actually hold my mouth open as I was starting to loose control of my facial muscles. At the end of it all, Peter tells me that the crack in the molar went up a fair way and he couldn't guarrantee that it wouldn't play up again.

And it did.

In the days before Christmas, I decided that enough time had lapsed that the tooth should have settled down following all the poking and prodding, and that in fact the twinges I was feeling were in fact the crack that had continued. Sigh. So onto the phone to arrange another appointment to look at getting a root canal. It seems that getting an appointment between Christmas and New Year is the simplest thing to do as people are obviously away/entertaining/festive/getting trashed/scared (take your pick). So I get in no probs. Except in that time, I pick up some lurgy from Bridie and end up with bronchiatis. And can't stop coughing.

Well, that's just not going to work - coughing and having to keep your mouth open for an hour. So I reschedule. But now it takes me 2 weeks to get in. But I still have the cough. So another reschedule. But this takes me to the end of February, and that is not going to work because Mark and I are going to be in New Zealand on a dairy trip then. So the next available appointment is early March. People have obviously returned from holidays/gotten rid of visitors/moved out of festive mindset/sobered up/are still scared but are facing their fears (pick one!).

I go on the cancelation list and luckily get an appointment for the 27th January (tomorrow). Yippee. However, in the week just past, my tooth has gone from slight twinges, to full on debilitating pain that makes my eyes pop and takes my breath away, to now, not being able to eat at all. And I have a dull throbbing in my tooth. I am worried that I have an infection up there somewhere and that Peter is not going to be able to do anything until that is fixed.

I am not the bravest person when it comes to dentistry. I can handle the 6 monthly checkups, I can handle the occasional filling. I have even had 2 wisdon teeth removed in the chair with just a local. But the thought of having ongoing work and repeat visits...not something I am looking forward to.

Not to mention the upcoming bill!!!!

We'll see what tomorrow at 2pm brings.

Some kind of fascination??????

This is slightly old news in our household now, although it relates to New Years Eve.

Due to a few things happening at the farm, we decided to hold a bit of a NYE bash for a modest amount of people. Even though it was BYO meat and grog, I still needed to organise salads, bread, utensils, odds and ends, ice, tables, clean up to the calf shed....... I also became the proud owner of an iPod Classic for Christmas, courtesy of my lovely husband, and as such, we decided to use this as the source of music for the eveneing as I also got one of those docking stations. Problem was, I really didn't have a clue as to how to get music on there.

So come 2.30pm, I am sitting in front of the computer downloading songs from my pitiful array of CDs. After being in bed for only 1/2hr, young Master Tom appears at the office door saying he needs to blow his nose. I grump at him, throw him a tissue and he goes back to bed. At about 5.30pm I decide that he'd better get up, although a late sleep was fine as he was going to be up late that night. I go into his room to find him crying on the bed saying that he had something up his nose.

Alarm bells start ringing inside my head as this is not the first instance of a foreign object up his nasal passage. So I get a tissue and get him to blow really REALLY hard. Nothing. And it sounds blocked to me. So I go get the torch. With him bent backwards and me peering as intently as I could, I just caught a glimpse of something green. Dark green, not snot green. On questioning him what it was that was lodged up there, he quite cheerfully tells me that he bit the end off the T-Rex's tail and stuck it up his nose!!! Why? I ask you....

A bit of background for those new to my son's nose mining adventures...... The week before his 2nd birthday, he went through a phase of sticking things up his nose - sultanas, cheese, ham, chewed up bits of tissue - however, I always managed to get them out either by getting him to blow, or by extraction with the tweezers. The day before his birthday, I noticed that the mucus that was constantly running out of his nose was luminious green in colour and smelt like something that should have been buried for a long time. As we were going shopping for party supplies, I decided against taking him to the doctor. But the smell was so rotten, that on arrival home, I rang and got an appointment the next day (his birthday) to see the doctor.

On seeing the doctor, Tom makes a screaming run for the door. As a result, we had to take him to the hospital and the doctor had to take him into theatre to remove it under general anaesthetic. It turned out to be the chewed up top of a sultana box. What a way to spend your birthday!

Ok, back to 2008. So based on previous experience, I waste no time in taking him into A&E to get someone more adept than me with tweezers to dislodge ol' T-Rex's tail. As it turns out, one of the registrars was on call and whilst I wouldn't want to say anything negative, my personal thoughts were that all he succeeded in doing was to push it further up Tom's nose. He did try to get it while Tom's was under a twilight sedation, but no go. So he called in his supervisor.....who just happened to be the same doctor that took the sultana box out 1.5 years ago!! He also tried while Tom was under a twilight, but the thing was so far up that he didn't want to knock it into his airway which was unprotected at that time. So, once again, we bundled the lad off to surgery to unblock his snozz. It is about 8pm by now and the party is in full swing.

And success! After 10 minutes in theatre, Ian comes out to say that everything is ok, and obviously thinking that I'll be back here again in the future, tells me he'll see me next time!!!!



Tom waiting for theatre with "Dr Bear" - the teddy the nurses gave him in A&E

By the time he'd recovered from his drugs, we finally got home just before 9.45pm. And just like kids are, his feet hit the ground out of the car and he was screaming around with the other kids having a wonderful time playing chasey and jumping on the trampoline (albeit a little unsteady). He lasted about 45 minutes and went to bed. The guests at the party thought it was very funny that I missed Christmas 2007 because of one child and I was potentially going to miss NYE 2008 because of another.

Bret (my uncle) found all this extremely amusing and took to calling Tom, "Nostrasaurus: the evil nosed dinosaur".

And it's all over barr the cleaning up!

Like any major celebration, the preparations and planning for Christmas day seem to go on for weeks and then the actual day arrives and departs in what seems like the blink of an eye. I was doing my last minute fruit and vegie shopping on Christmas Eve and I always like to spy on what other shoppers are buying and what behaviours they are exhibiting on the day before Chrissy. It never ceases to amaze me that despite the fact that the shops are shut for only one day, people seem to be overcome with some sort of panic that they may run out of something and will simply not survive without it. I mean afterall, who cannot go a day without pickled herring, or vine leaves soaked in vinegar, or pigs feet in aspic? Never mind that most people would never buy these things as a rule, but come Christmas Eve, it's like they think "well, the shops will be closed tomorrow and I may just need that stuffed sheep intestine in brine to get me through".

As for me, the most exotic thing I attempted to purchase was capers in rock salt, but our local supermarket did not stock these, so I had to settle for capers in vinegar instead. It was for a crust that I made to go on top of some salmon, and I must say, that it was damn delicious.

Christmas day dawned beautifully at our house and because we had some family staying elsewhere, I had to ensure that Tom did not go anywhere near the lounge room, which was by that stage chockers full of presents. We eventually let him loose on the Santa sack, which he thought was just terrific. Biddy also had a decent time of it, pulling things out of her sack, abley helped by daddy.

After the sacks where emptied, we decided that before we opened the rest of the presents, we would let the kids see what was waiting for them outside........

This is Tom's initial reaction............

.............because this is what he saw...................

A swing set and sandpit!!!

Bridie's main present was a little trike that converts from a push stroller to a trike as she grows.

Tom's main present was a big dinosaur that moves and roars (pic to come)

Of course, the day for us is no longer about just Christmas. It is also Bridie's birthday. Mark, Tom and I gave her 2 of those little crystal figurines; a baby's dummy and a small teddy bear. We've decided that each year, we will buy her one to mark her birthday, and it is also something that she can build up a collection of. In amongst all the food that appears at this time of year, I also managed to make a birthday cake and later in the evening when all the extended family was around, we sang 'Happy Birthday'.

As I have said to a number of friends, I simply cannot believe that a year has passed. It seems to have just gone by in the blink of an eye.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRIDGET GRACE!

A change is as good as a holiday...they say!

Just for the Christmas period, I've changed the background of the blog. And don't it look festive??!!

I have been a bit creative today and for the first time in.....I can't think how long.....I managed to do a bit of scrapping. Came together quite quickly, which is good, because I don't have a hellova lot of time at the moment!



The Carols by Candlelight and Santa's workshop that I have been heavily involved in organising, occured on Friday afternoon and evening, and I am pleased to say that with the exception of loosing power at about 3pm (prior to the start, but getting it fixed before everything kicked off), that pretty much things ran smoothly. We were even packed up and home by 11.30pm. After some forecasts of some dodgy weather, we actually ended up with a glorous afternoon which encouraged many families to stick around after seeing Santa, watch the other entertainers we had arranged to perform and also stay for the carols. Because there wasn't much of a break between anything, there wasn't really a chance for people to get bored and leave. My estimate would be that we had inexcess of 2,000 people there - maybe more. There certainly would have been around 1,500 that attended the carols.

On the home front, Bridie cut her 4th tooth the other day and yesterday started crawling properly. Not a lot, but some fairdinkum crawls up on all fours! Just in time for her 1st birthday. Mark and I took both the kids to Geelong for their Santa photos the other day. I thought that Tom was really going to beat his fear of Santa, as he stood patiently in line and watched all the other kids. He even rehearsed to us what he was going to ask Santa for ("a big snapping dinosaur and a doll for Bridgy"), but when it came our turn, he freaked. Again. And so did the little girl.

The photos therefore had to have both Mark and I in them again (I think I now have more photos with Santa as an adult than I ever did as a kid myself!!) and we had to have a number of goes to get at least one where we were all looking at the camera, no kids crying and looking half decent. It wasn't easy! Santa was a real trouper and perhaps due to the fact that we were early and he hadn't been worn out for the day, he was the best Santa I have come across. Seemed to really enjoy meeting the kids and had lots of time for them.

Christmas preparations are about to go into overdrive for me. I have been so focussed on the carols and Santa's workshop, that I haven't really paid too much attention to preparations for the upcoming day. I have been reasonably organised with buying gifts, but I do have some last minute ones to get and I have to 'run the supermarket gauntlet' tomorrow for the grocery items.

Christmas cheer

Ho Ho, Bloody Ho

Found this little number while trying to work out how to change my av on another site. Still haven't worked it out, but think that little Chrissy pics like this are just what I need to get into the festive spirit.

Or what about this one? Fairly apt for this blog I would say!

Getting ready for Christmas

I started taking some Christmas photos yesterday and today. The family ones were taken because we needed something to adorn the front of our family Christmas card. The others were taken just because!

What is it about December?

December is a crazy month for us. Notwithstanding that there is a frenzied approach to the whole festive season and the fact that I become overwhelmed with insane purchasing habits (something that NEVER happens at any other time of the year), it really is a busy month in general.

It starts with the obligatory family Christmas BBQ and just continues on. A quick snapshot of my month looks like this:
1st - daycare, meeting with local paper & start lighting town square with Xmas lights
2nd - continue with Xmas lights & Tom's swimming class
3rd - mum's group meet up, committee meeting in evening
4th - daycare and CFA pre season meeting
5th - travel to Melbourne for obligatory family Xmas BBQ. Stay overnight
6th - family BBQ
7th - travel home. Mum's birthday. Make her dinner
8th - daycare
9th - swimming class. Had a appointment with eye dr which was cancelled
10th - drs appintment for Tom's recurring ear infection
11th - daycare and dentist appointment for me (2 fillings)
12th - Craiglands staff Xmas dinner
13th - family member's 5th birthday party
14th - local CFA brigade's Xmas BBQ
15th - WEDDING ANNIVERSARY!. Also Tom's daycare Xmas concert. Off to Melb for a night with hubby ;)
16th - Travel home and do Xmas shopping on way
17th - a rest day!!!!!
18th - Cockies picnic
19th - Santa's workshop and Carols by Candlelight
20th - clean up house
21st - clean up garden
22nd - food shopping
23rd - nothing scheduled, but you can bet anything, it will not stay free!
24th - more food shopping and reading at Xmas mass. Family coming for Xmas/NYE
25th - Bridie's birthday and Christmas day.

I know that there is more to Dece than just 25 days, but to be honest, by the time we reach the 25th, I really couldn't care less.

As we have family coming for Christmas, I am using them as an excuse to try and get our house into some semblence of order. I seriously doubt that it is going to come off. I secretly would like to think that I could live in one of those houses that you see profiled in Women's Weekly or Vogue. You know the ones, never a thing out of place, no magazines littering the table, no pens cascading out of the too small canister you have them stored in, no drips of butter and jam on the bench from breakfast, no bills, accounts and other mail scattered on the kitchen table, not a speck of dust to be seen, no toys strewn over ever spare inch of floor despite the fact that the person being interviewed has 4 kids. My house will never look like that. EVER. Granted, my house could do with a damn good tidy up and a strict review of the things that are kept, but I am never going to live in the perfect house. And if I were realistic about it, I probably would really want to.

After all, we can never find things after we have a major tidy up!!