A Picture Paints A Thousand Words

This is pretty much what things have been like here lately! Some things seem to have gone bottoms up and we have all been left reeling. Just when life felt like it was getting into some type of routine everything changed. I guess the biggest thing of all was that the boys' nanny left just over a week ago. This was unexpected and has left us all feeling very confused and sad. She had her own reasons which don't need to be reiterated here. She had been part of all of our lives for the past five months and her loss is greatly felt. Today William asked if she had gone to yoga class and I had to explain to my dear little boys that she wasn't coming back. I saw the confusion and pain flicker across William's face but he tried to pretend that it didn't matter. Since when does a three year old have to hide his feelings? His hurt was mine in that moment. I don't know what the boys understand about what has happened but I wish that they didn't have to go through it.

The next thing that happened was that Oliver woke at 3am last Sunday and was struggling to breathe. I rushed him to the Women's and Children's Hospital where he was diagnosed as having an asthma attack. We were there for nine hours while Oliver was treated with oxygen and ventolin. He was not at all happy about the oximeter taped to his toe or the oxygen mask over his nose so for a very long and somewhat delirious nine hours I struggled to keep both in place while he did his best to remove them! He responded well to the ventolin and continued to have it for the rest of the week at home. A nurse stopped in each day to check him over.

If that wasn't enough the chooks went on a marauding rampage through my vegetable patch this week and made a very neat meal of all of the emerging seedlings!

We have all had a nasty respiratory virus for the best part of two weeks and one of the main symptoms is a relentless dry cough which is worst at night. Inger had a shocking time of it last night and coughed until 4am. In desperation I suggested that he take some ventolin as well and it seems to have had some effect.

This morning so as to give Inger a sleep in I took the boys out. We had our usual Sunday morning at Mama Carmella's and then visited some local playgrounds for lots of running and climbing. A couple of times recently we have come across boys playing cricket. I have no love of cricket, finding it extremely boring, but on both of these occasions the boys loaned us a spare bat and ball and we have made a passable effort at playing. William hit his first ball which we all thought was terrific.

Here is William sitting holding his 'paperwork'. He likes to place a pen over one ear and carry around a wad of papers which he refers to from time to time.
Oliver relaxing after a busy play in the third playground for the morning. We had just returned from a careful inspection of the stormwater drain to see if there were any monsters.

Oliver is becoming very independent and was keen to show me how he could make this roundabout spin very quickly.

William on the slide at Unley Oval


William on top of the pirate ship. With a very hoarse voice it was my job to sing the whole of 'I Am A Pirate King' from Gilbert and Sullivan whilst the boys steered the ship and looked through the binoculars.