Student and Mummy...

Another cold.

I'm so bunged up I can't breathe at all through my nose and blowing it has little or no effect.

I'm achey and cold.

This morning I was chatting to one of Grace's classmates mums, her youngest son (Tom's age) is currently in Great Ormond Street with kidney failure. She's struggling as she has 3 other children between the ages of 3 and 8 and has had to leave him there.......all alone.

Kind of puts my cold into perspective really

..........and I'm thinking that the answer to the previous post is 1/2 chance.

50%

She either will win or she won't - I'm thinking the other wins are irrelevant.....

There is one actual out come over 2 possible outcomes - am I right.........?

Ok Maths at college on friday we did probability.

I can't seem to get my head round it at all

I have done my homework all bar one question and no one knows how to do it (including my father in law who's a chartered accountant) so HELP...........Just a little hint.......

Jane and Alex are playing noughts and crosses, Jane wins 7 out of the first 10 games, and then 24 out of the following 40 games. Using these results calculate the probability that Jane will win the next game.

Do I multiply the 7/10 with the 24/40?

HELPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP

I think I'm hooked on junk.....

Cake,chocolate and crisps to be precise.

We do eat fairly healthy meals, although we have curry tonight yum!

I don't seem to be able to stop snacking on crap.

Snickers bars, Lemon bakewells, Hot cross buns, Crisps, Yum Yum's, doughnuts (filled with custard) etc!

In itself it's probably not much of a problem but I do need to lose a bit of weight - probably about a stone.

So from Monday I'm going into rehab, cold turkey.

Well actually I'm just going to try and get through a day without eating junk..............Watch this space.

....and that means me aswell unfortunatly.

Wouldn't it be great if you could freeze time?

Just freeze everyone around you, run around getting all the things done that you need to and then unfreeze them again.
I could get all my housework and college work done and no one would be missing out on anything.

This is a list of things I have to do in the next 3 weeks..........

1. Sort out the loft so that the junk can be ready to go into the skip.

2. Arrange the skip.

3. Clear out the garage so that the junk in there can also go in the skip.

4. Get to the back of the garage, find double pushchair, clean it take pics and email them to a friend who thinks he may know someone who wants it - or at least they did about 3 months ago when I first promised to dig it out!

5. Entire Maths assignment - questionaire testing the theory " women giving birth to girls have shorter labour than those giving birth to boys", this then has to be shown in various graphs.

6. Two Biology posters on Meiosis and Mitosis

7. 1200 word essay on Genetically Modified Crops - double

8. List the junk I've been meaning to sell on ebay, that has been on the bedroom floor for about 6 weeks and is gradually being strewn back around the house by the kids.

9. Finish painting the fence.

10. Actively encourage Giles continually to get the patio and turf laid in the garden.

All the while maitaining a calm and relaxed aura around the children while giving them quality time, with activities such as painting and model making, encourage Grace with her reading and Thomas with his potty training. Keeping up to date with the housework and continous pile of washing and ironing.Just call me..............

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Appealing?????

Most of the parents at the school my daughter attends do.

They park all along the pavement so that parents who actually have use of their legs and walk cannot get through.

They park up on the pavement and grass area if there are no other spaces - There is a big area for parents to park in but most do not as it's a little walk into school (like about 5 minutes).

I can't walk Grace to school as we live in the next town and I have to drop Tom off first and the go on to work, I appreciate that this is common now but why can't they park somewhere sensible?

They block the exit road with ridiculous parking, they park on corners - YES ON CORNERS, they get their children out of the car IN the road....it's not going to be long before someone is killed.

The school have sent numerous notes home asking parents to park sensibly but they continue to park like morons.

Today there was an accident - it was entirely down to bad parking, it was quite a bad accident although all the wounded were walking about.

I wonder if it will deter anyone?

Doesn't it drive you insane?

We've just had parents evening at Grace's school and there are certain parents that won't stop crowing about their children and their fantastic achievements.

Grace is doing brilliantly, she's in the top groups for everything - did I tell all the other mums this?.....No.

It drives me mad when we go to collect and the mums get the reading records out of the bags, pointing at the superb achievements of their child that day.
It makes the parents who's children may not be doing so well in that area feel crap and it bores everyone else to tears.

I thought this was common at Mother and toddler groups all you got then was -

"**'s little boy isn't walking yet"
"****'s little girl still can't sit up"
" blah blah blah's still not potty trained"

WHO CARES................JUST SHUT UP.

By all means share if your child does something outstanding but don't go on and on and on and on.........

oh just something to note, I think Tom's ready to be potty trained - we had a few mishaps yesterday but he's very keen! Watch this space............

Arghhhhh

I've just typed out a huge entry and lost it, so I guess that answers the title.
You know those days when you just think you shouldn't have got up?

I'm having one.

Yesterday I got a nail in my tyre or rather I noticed a nail in my tyre i'm not too sure when I got it.

This morning I get up and the fridge freezer is doing it's usual - "I need defrosting so I'm not going to work" trick. If the self defrosting super duper pipes freeze which they do on a regular basis the whole stupid fridge heats up and needs manually defrosting.

Arghhhhhhhhhh the spare freezer is at the back of the garage with about 10 years worth of accumulated garage type junk on it.
I called Giles to let him in on the disaster that is the fridge and he asked " are you sorting it?"
Errr yep telepathically transporting all the junk from the top of the spare freezer to the tip while sitting at WORK.

MEN!!!!!!

Then I get in the car to take Grace to school and it's making a very ominous squeaking type noise, I'm no mechanic but it sure doesn't sound like it should be making that noise, so we had to for go James Blunt this morning to see if I could hear where the noise was coming from. I moved around lots of bags, coats, crisp packets, sweet wrappers, school pictures, models made by Grace at school and anything else that gets left in the car, just in case it's something inside the car!
I don't think it is so I called a mechanic to arrange for him to come take a look.........the convo went like this

"Hi my cars making a noise could you come and have a look at it?"

"sure where will it be?"

" well until 2.30 it will be at work wih me, then I'll be collectng my daughter from school, then I'll be popping to the shop, then I'll be collecting my son, then I'll be home briefly , then I have college *err about 3 o'clock tomorrow morning?" * thought this but didn't say it!

" If the car is in constant use how do you expect me to look at it?"

GRRRR we decided that tomorrow afternoon would be ok!

I told him where I lived and he muttered about the road being notoriously bad for parking........Great start to the relationship with new mechanic I thought

Grace had her opening evening last night and she's doing brilliantly.
Top of the class for everything, popular, sensible, great little helper, very computer literate - helps the other kids........ooooh I could go on and on. All in all she's doing fantasically.

And we love her to bits!

Everyone was fighting fit yesterday which was a first for ages, we decided to make the most of it and go swimming with the kids.
Grace asked if she could put her costume on under her clothes to make it quicker to get changed and I agreed. when I was packing the bag I called her to ask where the knickers and vest were that I'd put on her bed to take in the swimming bag......she'd put them on over her costume.....

Tom can be a bit nervous around water and prefers to be able to touch the bottom - pretty typical of a little two year old I suppose. the nearest pool where he could touch the bottom is the Leisure pool in The Spectrum in Guildford.
It's a great leisure centre they've got everything Ice skating, bowling, 3 pools and a gym.

We decided to get there early as it gets busy, we arrived by 9.25am - pretty good for us! In the pool by 9.40am and freezing by 9.45am. the water was ok but the outside temp in there was pretty cool and when you are only in about 3 inches of water you start to get pretty chilly.
I tried to coax Tom in bit deeper and he obliged for a little while then wanted to go to the shallow area again.
The pool is brill, it's very shallow like the sea it gently shelves deeper and deeper. There are various slides and little nooks with jacuzzi type areas.
Grace loved it and the swimming lessons she's been having at our local pool for the last 8 months have increased her confidence no end. She used to be pretty nervous in the water not liking to get splashed and clinging to the side for dear life - now she's diving under, jumping in and swimming pretty well.

There were tears all round when after an hour and with Toms bottom lip clearly blue we decided to get out. But they both enjoyed it which is the main thing. Getting changed was a bit of a chore, there were no free family changing rooms and neither of the kids wanted to go with Giles to get dressed - to avoid all out tantrums I decided to do them both and Giles quickly got dressed, taking Tom up to watch the Ice skating while Grace and I finished off.

When we got home we all had a well deserved cuppa and a cake.

The afternoon was spent staining the new fence in the back garden while the kids trashed the lounge
I had nightmares that I was going to wake this morning and fine that the lovely dark brown stain had all soaked in and there would be orange fences again - but they were fine and they look much better - just about another 27 metres in total left to do.............any willing volunteers?

....what time Casualty's on I'll brain her.

Grace has obviously inherited my interest in all things medical and bloody!

Keep your fingers crossed for lots of blood, the more blood the better she likes it

Right off to watch with her

Yesterday my sister in law flew in from the states where she is currently living and working. She's back for a couple of weeks to catch up with family and friends.

For reasons that are best saved for a blog when I have more time my biological father and inlaws meet very rarely, infact my sister in law has never met him.
He works for British Airways as a long haul purser...you can already see where I'm going with this can't you

He was greeting the passengers onto the flight from Washington to Heathrow.
Sil handed over her boarding card and he saw her surname - and mentioned that his daughter has the same surname by marriage. the followning convo went like this.........

Dad - "where are you going to once you get back to the UK?"

Sil - "Surrey"

Dad - "small world, that's where my daughters from, where abouts in Surrey?"

Sil - "Walton on Thames"

Dad - "no kidding that's where my daughter lives"

At this point sil looks at dads name badge and vaguely recalls the surname.....

Sil - "Your daughter doesn't happen to be called Jo and have 2 kids called Grace and Tom does she?"

Dad - "yep"!

Sil takes seat for take off.

After take off Dad comes to check on sil and inform her that she's in the wrong seat, and upgrades her to 1st class.

How cool!

This morning.......

Grace; "Mummy did you used to write with feathers?"

Me; "errr no"

All I seem to have talked about since starting this blog is illness, although we seem to have had more than our fair share!

One of the things I was wanting to focus on was college.

As I've previously mentioned I'm doing an Access to Nursing and Midwifery course.
It's basically on the same level as A-Levels academically, it's to re-introduce us older people to studying again and prepare us for university.

You can do the course part time or full time, i'm doing it part time one evening a week - Wednesday and one morning a week - Friday.

On Friday evening I do Study Skills which is incredibly boring. It's all about how to structure an essay, how to give a presentation and the like and I hate it. After that I do Biology which I love.
I think it's an incredibly interesting subject and look forward to the lessons every week. The teachers great and the course content has been really great - and I've done very well which has helped

Friday morning I do Maths, I've certainly mentioned that in this blog! I'm enjoying that too, it's amazing how much clearer everything can be with a good teaher. Maths really is quite straight forward - well at GCSE level anyway!

So so far so good, you accumulate credits at level 2 or level 3, I can only get credits at level 2 for Maths but for study Skills and Biology so far I've got all level 3's so that's brilliant.

We finish in June for the year so I've got about 12 weeks left taking half term and easter into account and that's my first year done and dusted - wow it's flown.

So Toms been really poorly as I mentioned in my last entry we had an appointment with the GP Thurdsay evening..........

We went and waited for an hour - after being on deaths door all afternoon Thomas suddenly sprang into life, why do they do that???

Anyhow he was still pretty off colour, to cut a long story short the GP said he think he's got some kind of food intolerance possibly Gluten. He said he'd call the paediatrician and see if they would see Tom on Friday afternoon as an emergency, I was to call into the health centre Friday lunchtime to collect a letter to take with me.

When I woke up Friday morning there was no sound coming from Tom's room which is unusual - infact he usually wakes me up. I got up and went in there and he was on the floor awake but unable to move he just had no energy. I put him into bed covered him over and had a shower. After my shower it became clear that he was probably quite dehydrated, he'd had a dreadful bout of the runs the evening before. I decided no to bother waiting for the GP and called the health centre leaving a message for the doc not to bother with the letter as I would be taking him straight to A+E. I explained the situation to the receptionist and she agreed this was probably the best course of action.

I dropped Grace at school and then went over to the hospital with Tom. He was dreadully limp, he hadn't spoken all morning and as you can imagine I was getting pretty stressed. he's usually such a bouncy boy, chatting away and generally getting into naughtyness wherever possible - the evening before he was chatting up a lady in the doctors waiting room, he called her a girl which I think she found amusing as she must have been 90 if she was a day!!!

His head lolled to one side and the receptionist smiled and asked if he was "sparko" I said no actualy he's wide awake just limp - she immediately put a red sticker on our notes and sent is through to the paediatric department.
Once we were in there he was seen and weighed by a nurse, briefly checked over by a doctor and we were alowed home.

Aparantly he was dehydrated but they didn't think that he needed to stay in.
"If you are worried bring him back"..........

Ok so what's wrong?
Gastroentiritis..........considering his history and the fact that he's under a consultant at the hospital for bowel problems and has been for nearly 2 years - I think this was incredible.

I'm sure that Thomas did have some "inflammation of the intestine", but why?
Why does he keep getting "inflammation of the intestine"?

I gave them a sample of his poo as advised by my GP and he looked at it and gave it back to me .......Er why? What the feck was I going to do with it? Shouldn't they have tested it or something?

So as it stands at the moment he's recovering from this bout, we've been advised by the GP not to call them again as "there's nothing we can do"....Thanks that's helpful.

So we wait until the end of April for the next appointment at the hospital.

Oh and I've been told to stop the laxatives that he was given at the last outpatients appointment. Do they think I'm utterly stupid?

I am very close to giving up completly.
But he's my 2 year old son so I can't.

Toms been ill again.

I'm at the end of my tether now. We have an appointment with the gp tonight.

I have no idea what he's going to do, very little probably seeing as he's under the hospital.

He's got the runs again and has had since Monday. Everything is going straight through him, although when I say everything I mainly mean drinks as he's not eating - and hasn't really since the weekend.

His bottom is red raw now, so hopefully if little else the gp will give us something to put on that.

He's ice cold, his nose hands and feet are like blocks of ice, and he keeps crying that he's cold. We have obviously stopped the laxatives that the hospital doc gave us.

I feel dreadful for him he screamed the place down this morning while I changed his nappy.

I'm truly fed up today - please keep you fingers crossed that the doctor can sort him out.