September 2009 – Cork’s Corner

Archive for September, 2009

Update

30 Sep

Posted in Health, Nathan's second year | 1 Comment »

After our trip to hospital on Sunday, I was left with the impression that Nathan would be much better on Monday except that the cough was likely to hang around for 7 to 10 days. In fact, the doctor told me that Nathan would probably be ok to go to childcare, so I had high hopes that I would make it to my last two (official) days of work. However, on Monday Nathan was really unhappy, easily upset and of course as soon as something caused him to cry he’d have a coughing fit. I decided to stay home to look after him for the day, hoping he’d be ok the following day. He was really tired during the day, but after a long (though very broken) day sleep he seemed to be a lot better. So I tried to drop him off at Ebony’s house on Tuesday morning, but he obviously wasn’t himself and got upset really easily and didn’t want to let me out of his sight. So I packed him back into the car and drove home, which I was really glad I did because he had some very unhappy crying/coughing periods throughout the day. He had a really bad night, waking numerous times and screaming until he had coughing fits. This morning I noticed some dried blood at the entrance to one of his ears, and decided I’d had enough of not knowing what was going on and made an appointment with a GP.

The doctor took one look in the ear with the blood in it and said “well, I know why he’s been waking up screaming”. The poor tyke has an ear infection, is on antibiotics three times a day for the next 10 days and then has to go back to the doctor so she can determine if he’s perforated his ear drum. Apparently blood blisters can develop in the ear drum and burst, which is what must have happened to Nathan.

So I’m now hoping that the snot, grizzles, screaming, broken nights and coughing will all get sorted out relatively quickly now that Nathan’s on antibiotics and getting several doses of Panadol a day to relieve the pain, and we have our happy little boy back again soon. I’m also hoping that there’s been no damage done to Nathan’s ear drum.

Croup

28 Sep

Posted in Health, Nathan's second year | 2 Comments »

Nathan woke up Saturday morning at 5 am (nearly an hour earlier than normal) sounding like he had smoked a packet of cigarettes a day for the last 40 years. His voice was very croaky and had the occasional cough. I figured he was getting a cold, since Andrew had been feeling a bit flu-y earlier in the week. The interesting thing was that one of the first things Nathan did was to run to the fridge, get the Panadol out of the fridge and ask for ‘medicine to feel better’. He hadn’t done this since he was sick last time (a few months ago?) with a fever that lasted for 3 days. Since I couldn’t work out what the problem was (besides the croaky voice) I put the Panadol back in the fridge and we got on with our day.

We were planning on going to Julie’s 40th birthday party that evening, and to my disappointment (and despite the early morning), Nathan slept just over an hour for his midday sleep. I had no idea how we were going to manage an evening out with a toddler who hadn’t had enough sleep. In the afternoon we noticed that Nathan had a slightly elevated temperature, and by 5 pm it was 38 degrees. We decided to stay home in the evening and try to let Nathan have as much sleep as he could get in the hopes that he would be better this morning.

Nathan slept fitfully from 8 pm until midnight when he woke with a 39 degree fever and the worst cough I’ve ever heard. It made it very difficult for Nathan (and anyone else, for that matter) to sleep. He breastfed for hours as it was the only thing that seemed to calm him and he finally fell asleep in my arms and slept there for the rest of the night. Unfortunately Nathan still had the horrible cough yesterday morning, and while he seemed happy enough in himself most of the time (he ate breakfast, played with grandma (who visited us for the weekend) and ran around giggling), the activity would set off coughing fits. After a couple of hours he became more subdued, seemed to be having trouble breathing when distressed/coughing but was able to be calmed down with a breastfeed. Andrew and I were anxious enough about his difficulty in breathing to take him to the Children’s Hospital (why does he always seem to get sick on the weekends?).

We rocked up at Emergency at the Children’s Hosptial around 10 am yesterday morning and had Nathan’s name put on the waiting list to see the triage nurse. There seemed to be four children ahead of us, but when one of the nurses heard Nathan coughing she came out to the waiting area to check him out and then took us into a room where she entered all our details and organised an acute care bed for him. A doctor checked him out then and gave him a steroid to relax the airways and he was then monitored for the next couple of hours. Needless to say that as soon as the medicine started to make Nathan feel better, he was a real handful to keep out of trouble….there’s a lot of interesting looking things in a hospital!!! He ripped off the sticker on his toe that was monitoring his heart rate and oxygen levels too, but he obviously didn’t need them by that time since they weren’t replaced. When the doctor came back to check him out we were told we could go home, and he also gave us a steroid tablet to give to Nathan that evening to help him through Sunday night. We finally left the hospital around 2 pm, a little more knowledgeable about signs of breathing distress and with a very exhausted toddler.

Nathan slept well last night and today is a lot better and though he is still having nasty coughing fits, he isn’t having trouble breathing through them (and the horrible barking sound associated with it all has gone). Still, he is very easily upset and of course that sets off a coughing fit, so we are having a quiet day at home today.

Nathan often says his little phrases over and over again, and on the way to the hospital yesterday he was saying “doctor, medicine, feel better”. Thankfully he was right!

Dust Storm Sunrise

23 Sep

Posted in Mascot Living, Weather | 1 Comment »

The radiant red of a dust storm during sunrise this morning made for an amazing spectacle! These are photos that Andrew took from inside our flat….just before Nathan and I woke up!

Good boy

20 Sep

Posted in Nathan's second year | 1 Comment »

Everyone says it and it drives me NUTS!! Nathan loves to hand money over when we buy things from a shop….the shop person receiving the money will say it. Close family or friends might say it in response to him doing something they wanted him to do. I’m sure Ebony (his nanny) says it. People we don’t know will say it if they happen to chat to us in the supermarket or on the beach. However, it’s a phrase I try very hard not to say (took a while to get the hang of it but the words rarely pass my lips these days) and something Andrew tries hard with (and is succeeding) as well.

The idea behind it (for those of you who read here and don’t know) is that you want your child to do things because they want to do them, and not because it pleases his parents or others. The idea is that this can set up the trap that the child needs to keep performing to feel accepted and loved, and by not telling him that he is a good boy after he puts in some effort can make him feel rejected (and I know someone who has real…and sad…experience with this and their child). It potentially raises a child that is dependent upon praise for the approval of others, and can make him scared to try new things. There is a lot of information about this philosophy to be found in books and on the internet. The thing is, it makes sense to me. I can’t see the point of saying “good boy” if Nathan eats his meal or gets me the whisk from the drawer in the kitchen. What makes more sense to me is to comment on the fact that he finished his meal, and simply say “thank you” for getting the whisk. Of course there can be more words put in there to help clarify why you’re saying and why you’re saying it which also helps. And the praise isn’t restricted to the ‘good boy’ phrase. It certainly goes further, so we deliberately find other ways of recognising effort rather than using an easy praise phrase. Examples might be: for doing a painting (“great painting” vs a discussion of what was painted and the colours used) or kicking in the pool (“great kicking” vs “you’re kicking is improving with all the practice you’ve been doing”).

I love it when I see Nathan rejoice in what he has managed to achieve. No praise is required…you can simply see the joy in his face and in the delighted way he claps his hands. It’s wonderful, and so easy to join in on without using a praise phrase. So it almost broke my heart yesterday when Nathan was ‘helping’ to vacuum the floor, and repeating over and over and over “good boy, good boy, good boy”. He wouldn’t let me take the vacuum cleaner from him even after he’d spent ages vacuuming, and he repeated his little mantra much of the time. It seemed to me that he was doing it just so he would get the praise that he wanted, even though I know that he does like playing with the vacuum cleaner. I eventually had a discussion with him about how he is a good boy but not because he was vacuuming, and how Daddy and I love him no matter what he does. He was happy to stop vacuuming soon afterwards, so I’m not sure if it’s because I told him he was good or if he would have done it anyway. Either way, it’s made me determined that I ask people who regularly spend time with him to try not to use such phrases.

Counting to 12

19 Sep

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Nathan counting (well, mumbling really) to twelve.

19 months old

13 Sep

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Another month down and it’s hard to specify what Nathan is up to at the moment….he’s just getting better at everything. He is now confidently going up and down steps without hanging on or crawling (depending on step size, of course), his speech contains more words and he is putting groups of words together to portray a meaning. Some groups are repeated over and over, others I recognise as short phrases that I say myself, and on yet other occasions Nathan just comes out with his own selection of words. It’s all pretty cute really.

Swimming is also coming along well. He has a vest with floats built into it that he wears when we are in the pool in our residential complex as it helps to keep him warm as well as give him some buoyancy. The last few days we have taken out the floats at the front and given him a pool noodle and he happily kicks all around the pool, going where ever he wants to.

The biting has stepped up a notch, though. Nathan has been biting off and on for a few months now. I don’t know if it’s a reflection of him being bitten on a pretty regular basis by Solly, Ebony’s son, two days every week, or if it would have just happened anyway (which is probably the case). He doesn’t just bite when he’s upset that we’re stopping him from doing something he wants to do, he also bites when he’s having fun. My arms are covered in bruises from his biting, and Andrew copped a good one on his face tonight! So far it’s only Andrew and myself that he’s bitten, and I hope it stays that way.

What we’ve been doing this month….

Painting

Visited Toronga Zoo with some friends from NZ who came to visit for a couple of days with their 16-month-old son

James and Nathan at Toronga Zoo

And saw real elephants and even a 7 week old baby elephant!

Mummy and Nathan set up the worm farm

More watering of the garden (we now have 2 tomato plants, a chilli plant, bay tree, oregano, thyme, parsley, chives, rosemary, garlic, beans, carrots and lettuce planted. Nathan knows what all the plants are too.

Helping Mummy cook dinner (peeling a carrot….well, attempting to peel a carrot if you want to be accurate)

Playing dress-ups

Eugowra holiday

02 Sep

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

We have recently returned from a week long holiday at a farmhouse near Eugowra in NSW. It was located on a 5000 acre sheep property just outside of Eugowra and about a half hour drive from Parkes and an hour drive from Orange. It should have been about a 4.5 hour drive from our place in Sydney, but with Nathan it turned into 6 hours each way. Mum and dad were on their way back to Victoria after spending winter in Queensland, so they joined us for the week. Shirley and Silver also dropped in for a couple of days on their way to Canberra for a conference.

When we arrived the owner, Anne, had the combustion fire going to warm the house (not the kitchen etc. area). The nights were all cold with most showing a frost in the morning. The heaters in the kitchen and bathroom really couldn’t cope with the cold, but they were better than having nothing at all.

The place was like an old house consisting of bedrooms and a living area with the kitchen, bathroom and toilet slightly separate that had been combined together at some stage to make one house with the main part of the house separated from the bathroom/kitchen/laundry/toilet by a very wide corridor. At first glance the kitchen appeared to be very rustic, but once we had worked out how to use the oven and hotplates it was just fine. It pretty much had everything that could be expected from a holiday rental place except a washing machine, but that was due to the house having only a small rainwater tank. The owners plan to install a larger tank at some stage and include a washing machine, and that would certainly help. Mum had her own means of washing clothes in a bucket of water with what was essentially a large funnel with holes on a large stick. Nathan loved trying to help out and said ‘up down’ as he moved the funnel up and down in the bucket. Two weeks on and he still sometimes comes out with “up down Oma”!!

We spent a lot of relaxing time around the farmhouse, going on walks, and watching the birds. We also went to Cowra for about half a day. Well, it was intended to be a day trip, but Nathan had other ideas….he simply wouldn’t go to sleep in his pram so we had to resort to the car and ended up driving back to the farmhouse while he slept. Our trip to Cowra was to see the Japanese garden, which was really lovely and relaxing. We also went to see the site of the POW camp and read some info about the Cowra breakout which was interesting. Our other morning outtings were a trip to the Parkes telescope and a visit to the nearby National Park. It was a pretty place, and we found a lovely spot to have our lunch.

Anyway, here are some photos from the week.

Nathan watching the sheep!