Right! Enough with all the grumbling!

It's time for something POSITIVE, I reckon!  Enough with all the grumbling and groaning: let's have some GOOD news for once.

1.  After my tirade last week I took Owen to his routine cardiologist appointment.  He was born with a heart murmur, which, when looked at on an ultrasound, was an 8mm hole in the 20mm wall between the top two chambers of the heart.  For those in the know, this hole is present in all foetuses as they do not require their lungs to oxygenate the blood, but it closes upon birth once babies start screaming their heads off and breathing independently.  Well, either because of Owen's crazy genes or because he was premature, his hole didn't close.  This meant his heart had to work a lot harder to both pump blood and to keep him oxygenated.  WELL!  Last Monday, creepy Dr. Thomas (lovely, efficient doctor but stands far too close to me for comfort) confirmed what Owen's paediatrician suspected: the hole has almost closed by itself!  This is truly remarkable.  You would expect to see the ratio between hole and wall stay the same (so if the wall grew to 40mm, the hole would be 16mm), but not actually get any bigger.  Owen's has done the complete opposite and closed to what the creepy doctor called "a slit".  This, my dear friends, means he doesn't have to have heart surgery.  Ah... what a happy, happy afternoon that was.

Also, we got the babysitting situation sorted because some remarkable friends who live hundreds of miles away saw how upset I was and took matters into their own hands.  What fabulous people.


2.  Today has already been a day for gettin' shit DONE.  So far, I've managed to feed, clothe and change Owen twice (in themselves quite a feat), call our medical supplies provider to cancel our next order, call another provider to set it up there instead (don't ask - insurance in this country is mind-boggling), call my therapist to make a few changes, call Stepping Stones for Owen's December appointment, call a new doctor for Mike because he's a lazy bum and hasn't done it (and that toe is now DISGUSTING and I can't bear looking at it any longer) and finally... eat lunch.  Productive, considering it's only 12.30pm and I'm still in my pyjamas.

3.  In other good news: We're looking at high chairs!  Whoop whoop.  This is good news because it means Owen's head control will soon be good enough to manage sitting in one, our speech therapist is on board with it, he's growing out of his bouncy chair AND I get to start him on solids.  Whoop whoop indeed!

4.  Halloween was fun.  Owen was a teddy bear, I wore purple and black bat deely boppers and Mike wore his hilarious spike hat.  It's a shame I'm too lazy to put pictures on here, but you can use your imagination.  Our neighbourhood holds trick or treating at a set time every year, so we had about a hundred small children banging on the door for three hours on Saturday afternoon, and then nothing for the rest of the weekend.  I think it's a fantastic way to go about it because there was a real sense of community and it had a total party atmosphere.  It was the first time I've really enjoyed Halloween and I'm sure it's down to both owning our pretty house and having Owen here.

5.  And lastly: Owen's hair is growing.  It's so cute!  He's a little blondie right now but I swear his eyebrows are turning ever so slightly ginger, like me.  His hair is long enough to put bubbles in and spike it up in the bath.  What a superstar.

Tina.