March 8, 2005

Yesterday Oliver had his grommets put in. We had to get to the hospital by 7.30am to fill out paperwork and it was happening at 8am, they did all the baby procedures first up. It was quite busy and there was another little boy who also was having grommets in. Oliver handled it all very well despite not having anything to eat. He was in and out of the surgery within 10 mins and awake immediately. There was a little bit of a delay in telling me when I could give him something to eat or drink, so he was quite upset about it but once he could eat something, all was well again.

Stuart was at home looking after Benjamin and we were home by 10am.

I don’t know what I was expecting but he was quite subdued due to the gas I suppose and he seems to be able to hear a little more than before. He is generally in a good mood but just tired and not really eating. Will wait and see when all the ‘glue’ starts coming out, hopefully the real improvement will be then.

After all this attention being heaped on Oliver, Benjamin is really wanting my attention and doesn’t want to leave my side.

We took the boys to Bal-loric together on Sunday rather than Stuart going on his own with them. I think I should have let him go on his own as whenever the boys wanted someone to help play or whatever, they would say ‘no mummy help’ and push Stuart away. Hugely upsetting for him and he felt quite rejected because of it, I felt very guilty to have put him in that position. Is this normal? I wonder if it is because of Stuart’s heavy travel schedule, they do adore him but it is limited, they are very focused on me for 90% of the time regardless if he is around.

Oliver has been waking early in the morning for the last few weeks, his ear infection has cleared so he isn’t waking screaming but in a good mood. He pads in and climbs in with us with all his favourite things (blanket, dummy, giraffe, pillow and some toys). Most often he just settles down and sleeps, other times I give him a pot of yoghurt first and then he settles down. When he wakes up, the first thing he does is to turn to me and give me a hug and kiss and say ‘hello mummy, clothes now’. I don’t know what I can do to make them give more of themselves to Stuart, he is crushed when they reject him. He tries so hard to get them interested and they love playing with him but not without me.

Oliver’s osteo appointment was today and I got the time wrong, thinking it was 3pm (which was the time of an earlier appointment) I forgot that I had changed it to 1.30pm. I put them down for an early sleep thinking I would take them when they woke. One look at my calendar at 1.45pm I realised I had missed it. I was rifling through the phone book as the phone rang, it was the osteo wondering where we were. I felt so bad it means that Oliver won’t see an osteo before we leave for NZ along with messing the osteo around. I won’t know now whether it would have helped him on the flight or not.

The other thing that has been happening lately is the snow and unbelievably cold weather. It has snowed pretty much for the last three weeks and solid over the last week. By Friday evening, we had about 15 cms snow on the ground. Oliver loved playing in it and at the weekend we all got out and made a snowman. Benjamin really doesn’t like the cold and would rather stay inside. It does look lovely when it is covering all the gardens and houses but is a pain if you have to go anywhere. So treacherous on the road driving around, I have not driven in snow before and it is really scary, our car is not built for snow, I miss the Rangy.

Still it is spring time now and the previous weeks’ snow has melted.