Name that Mutation

"tonsillitis"

The word "tonsillitis" means an infection or inflammation of the tonsils.  My little guys get it occasionally in winter and it's easily cleared up with antibiotics.  (There is no indication that it would be appropriate to go whacking parts out of the children at this stage, that's not where I'm going with this.)

Tonsillitis seems to be more contagious than modern medicine realises, and it suffers more mutations than the text books would indicate.

I have noticed that if Jessie is unfortunate enough to get tonsillitis and have a day off school, the illness spreads quite quickly to Buzz.  However, it undergoes an important mutation before it does.  Once it reaches Buzz's little body, what used to be a strain of tonsillitis has in fact mutated to:

"asymptomatosis"

Asymptomatosis, observed and named by me, simply means:
• "a-" = without
• "-symptoma-" = observable symptoms
• "-osis" = a general condition, as opposed to "-itis" meaning inflammation or "-oma" meaning a mass.  Just a plain old "-osis."

More properly, the illness is referred to as "acute selective asymptomatosis."  "Selective" means it happens whenever Buzz pleases, and "acute" means it comes on suddenly in the morning when I say, "Go and find some school socks."

Once Asymptomatosis has infected poor dear Buzz, it spreads quite quickly to me.  It undergoes another critical mutation before it does.  Once the illness gets to me, it has mutated to:

"asymptomatata"

Sing with me: 

"♫ Asymptomatata! ♪♫ I made up the phrase ... ♪

♪ Asymptomatata! ♫ It's a passing craze ... ♫

♫ I have no worries ♪ It's not a genuine sick day ... ♫♪♪"

Which basically means one or more of my children want to stay home without displaying any observable symptoms, and I couldn't give a toss.

2012 Bus Story - Sequel

You will be pleased to know that the bus, complete with new battery thanks to a Good Samaritan with black-grease-stained hands called Phil, performed admirably for the week of camp, taking 20 teenagers at a time to and from electives.  "Performed admirably" in this case involves the bus shuddering and shaking along the road while roasting its sweaty, red-faced passengers and melting Mr de Elba's Thankyou Chocolate which was given by the camp leaders to thank him for driving the "Bucket 'o' Bolts" all week without once uttering a bad word.

The only Bus Incident that occurred while actually on camp was this:

The bus ran over our Family Sunscreen.  But it was still useable despite the bottle being squashed flatter than it was, the lid being blown off and, I suspect, a good amount of sunscreen being splattered all over the road.

And that's the end of The Bus Story.  How underwhelming.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The children had a blast on camp, even though they were only hangers-on at a camp which was really for high-schoolers.

There was a lot of beach swimming:

 

Bimi insisted on swimming with her handbag one day.  

It even went out in the surf with her.

 Counting heads: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ...

...6, 7...

  No, no, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8... plus Rex makes 9!  Nine?  Oops we counted someone else's kid ...

 In the middle of the nights I didn't want Rex to wake anybody up, so I took him to a little room to settle him.  In the darkness without my contact lenses, I could see practically nothing.  I named the room "The Pineapple Room" because it had fruit in it (including pineapples) waiting to be used for The Masterchef Challenge one night.
How tropical, how fun, how happy does "The Pineapple Room" sound?  How disappointing to see it already had a name, heralded by the sign on the door which could be clearly seen in the light of day:

This camper made a corn cob stack with all our leftovers.  Clever.

On the day that Buzz and Jessie went with the campers to Wet'n'Wild, Woody and Rex and I packed the day full of activities with Justamum and two of her kids Boris and Bimi.  At the big local shopping centre, Woody spent half an hour on a bouncy bus before being bored stiff at a dreadful Lorax stageshow involving two perky dancing girls and a person in a huge Lorax suit saying "Redooce, Reuse, Recycle" in a fake New York accent.

Buzz and Woody loved the bowling:

Belle, who had never been bowling before, won the game.  After we got home, we realised that the final round entitles you to three bowls, not two.  Fail, Givinya, Fail.

Here are Jessie, Banana, Buzz, Belle and Bimi dressed up for Formal Night at camp.  Blurry phone photos again.

Little Rex spent most of the week in his new wrap. I got a Storchenwiege after finding my way out of the babywearing culture I accidentally got immersed in as part of my research into the type of wrap to buy.  I just want to be hands-free, not subscribe to a culture!  Babywearing Institute?  Babywearing Conventions?  For real?

Formal Night: the de Elbas weren't prepared and had to make do with regular holiday clothes:

The children took a joking suggestion that they were traveling in the trailer as the honest truth, and were disappointed to hear that it wasn't going to happen:

Dear Baby Rex.

Completely exhausted after a week at camp, Rex slept for 11.5 hours straight as soon as he hit his comfy cot.  Here he is the next day saying "Keep your bassinette.  I will sleep right here thanks."

A photo of Little Rex

Introducing Little Rex

Introducing our new little boy - Timothy Flynn born in the early hours of last Wednesday morning!  In the weeks leading up to his birth I'd been on a limerick binge, and I ended up wishfully writing this one, hoping for a natural spontaneous birth, dreaming of the middle-of-the-night "Honey it's time" moment that I always thought would be nice (and it ended up being quite accurate):

I woke in the night with chagrin,

The babe sought to escape from within

We did a quick race

From our home to The Base

And out popped sweet Timothy Flynn.

Which is quite corny, but I liked it.  Our public hospital is called the Base Hospital, and it's referred to as "the Base" - I hope that makes sense.

I hadn't gone out of my way to tell my blog that we knew we were having a little boy, but it wasn't exactly a secret.  Now that it's definitely out though, I can post this one I wrote after the ultrasound:

We're having (from the ultrasound) another little DUDE.

It seems it would be prudent to start budgeting for food.

Although the food, financially, will surely be the worst,

It seems that we will need another fridge and freezer first.

Maybe I'd posted that already and forgot, and now I don't have time to go back and check.  Sorry if you'd heard that one before.

He was born the day before his due date, about 30 hours before I was booked for an induction - something the doctor wanted to avoid after a previous caesarean.  Many things were tried, but they all failed one by one: walking, hot food, essential oils, etc. In the end, a day of bouncing gently on an exercise ball did the trick - or maybe it was the Thai for lunch and Mexican for dinner - or maybe it was the psychological power of LOOKING at a bottle of castor oil that I was too nervous to actually TAKE for fear of too-strong contractions.  At any rate, by midnight we were wondering if it was 'Time', by 2am we were calling my Mum and Birth Suite, by 3am the midwife was thinking that it was certainly 'Time' ... and then things are fuzzy for me.  I guess that because he was born at 3:23am, whatever happened in those gas-hazed moments was pretty crucial.

Feeding is fun with expressed milk in a bottle! Soon this fun will be over and we'll feed the usual way (prayforus), but for the moment, everyone is enjoying this bit (and so am I, because I have chosen to do it this way BEFORE the crying and blood and countless people checking the attachment only to declare that it's right, it just hurts.)

This little superhero turned three, and we bought a proper cake from a shop, after my disastrous attempt with Jessie's cake in April which I didn't blog because - sigh. We are seriously considering buying cakes for family birthdays from now on because they are SO NICE!  This one was superb!  'Bleurgh' to homemade cakes, particularly mine because I cut corners.

And now I will get back to snuggling with this handsome little prince, as well as driving our new car (where can I unnecessarily drive to today? Whee!), fixing interminable problems with Woody's birthday gifts, driving Buzz and Jessie to and from school, breaking up fights, managing the kitchen and the laundry as best I can, trying to cap my unreasonable rage at some highly-expensive, professionally-fitted, terribly-posh maternity bras that ceased to fit me a week after I bought them (and now there's no hope), and dealing with potential depressive illness in a sadly neglected family dog.  And hugging Mr de Elba, who helps me with all of the above except the bra issue.

I had a baby boy and I can't seem to find time to post about it on my blog because I keep getting interrupted because there's so much else to DO ...

I had a baby boy and I can't seem to find time to post about it on my blog because

I had a baby boy and I can't seem to find time

I had a baby boy

I had