Abi & Izzy - the next 5 years

A very tired post walk puppy! What can I say? After feeling so jubilant that Abi was out of hospital for the third time and home again, we've had another bumpy week with her being readmitted yet again with another infection. What a rough ride she has had - it's been a difficult month for us all. This time round she'd had a good run of things, having been out of hospital for over a week and seemingly doing well. She went to school on Monday and I genuinely thought we had turned a corner. When she came home she was tired but happy and went to bed as normal on Monday night. By tuesdya morning she wasn't feeling great having not slept well so I made the decision to keep her off school to get some rest, By Tuesday evening she was experiencing bouts of pain and I started to get suspicious. She went to bed and then woke me around midnight to say she was having nightmares and couldn't sleep. I got into bed with  her and it was immediately apparent she was hotter than she sh...

It's official - Abi had a sulk this afternoon which means things are back to normal - woo hoo! Who knew we would be so pleased to see our daughter lying on her bed grumping? It's been a tough couple of weeks but we are definitely now through the worst and looking forward again.  In other news, it was also Abi's birthday yesterday - our baby is 14! Goodness me, where has the time gone? It feels like only a few years ago we were bringing her into the world, and now she is 14! The one thing you don't want as a run up to your birthday is a spell in hospital, coupled with lockdown. It's fair to say the day itself came around quickly and I'd barely had time to plan properly for celebrations. Luckily coronavirus has put paid to doing anything anyway so we needn't have worried. Abi desperately wanted a new pair of flash wellies for her birthday so I managed to order these online, and then it was a case of make do for the rest - a new duvet set and some smellies - re...

On the mend! Did I say that I was glad to see the back of last week? Well, it turned out there was more to come. After coming home and having a good weekend where it felt like Abi was making a solid recovery, she started to go downhill on Tuesday. At first we thought maybe it was just because she was moving around a bit more, but I could see that this was a different pain. Instead of the pain around her wounds, Abi was getting a pain which was coming in waves and radiating out from her stomach across her whole torso. It started relatively benignly, but was clearly getting worse and so on Wednesday I phoned the doctor who attributed it to the normal aftermath of surgery. By Wednesday evening when it came on she was freezing and grimacing and no amount of Calpol was taking the edge of it. I'd been sleeping in with her since she came home - the pain was definitely worse in the middle of the night - and so we went to bed on Wednesday hoping it would ease. Abi woke at 1:30am (not unusua...

What a week this has been - one I definitely glad to see the back of. It started as normal - work and back to school for the girls after the half term break. The drama started on Wednesday evening when Abi came home from school complaining of tummy ache. She blamed it on the school dinner, saying it hadn't agreed with her and made her feel rubbish. Very unusually for Abi, she took herself off to bed without tea and when I checked on her about 9pm she was fast asleep so I thought nothing of it. The next morning I walked Bertie as usual about 6:30am and came home to find her still in bed. I took Betty around the garden for her morning snuffle and turned to see Abi hobbling down the path, hunched over and very pale. I took one look and phoned the GP, to be told they would ring back "at some point in the morning" - I didn't think it could wait. I called 111 and explained that she had pain across her abdomen which had now moved to the lower right hand side and they confirm...

Ugh, and so it starts again - lockdown #2. After promising us that it would not happen and that it would be devastating for the country, the scientists won the argument and BoJo has given in. What this pandemic has shown us if nothing else is that there are an awful lot of every anxious people out there who would prefer to lock themselves away and hide from potential danger whatever the cost, rather than undertake a personal risk assessment and decide for themselves whether its safe to go out. At least this time the schools remain open and we can but hope that continues to be the case.  This time we are at least a little more prepared, even if the weather is dire and it feels all a bit apocalyptic out there with Storm Aiden (or whatever this one is called) raging. I've stocked up on some new jigsaws (last time they sold out pretty quickly) and we have some new games. The most recent one is called Genius Squares and its gone down so well with the family I've had to buy a second ...

Bertie gets the short straw on the beds again I'm wondering whether I should start a new blog given the kids are generally off doing their own thing now and normally hate for me to take a photo of them, so it gets harder and harder to write about their antics. The dogs on the other hand love being with me, never complain if I take a photo and with Betty having settled in, there is never a dull moment.  She has become a fully blown member of the family very quickly - accepted by all, even if she has no clue yet about house training and we seem to spend a lot of the day wiping up puddles. How she can go 8 hours over night without a mishap when it seems 8 minutes is a push during the day I do not know. She does understand that when we take her outside (about every 30 mins at the moment, plus when she wakes up and when she has just eaten), its time to pee, but that doesn't stop her from coming in and doing it again. I guess it takes a bit more time for her to realise that doing thi...

It's Sunday again - where do the weeks go? This weekend we have mainly been ,making the most of the autumnal weather and doing the things we love. Abi has been at Angie's and has come home tired but happy after having pretty much the run of the yard to herself all weekend. Today she was left to get on with stables and sorting the horses out while Angie left for Cornwall and Claire was not sue until lunchtime. I have said a number of times that the responsibility she has there is quite something and she responds to it brilliantly. It definitely feels like a better set up for her at the moment to go there every other weekend and have all the advantages of a proper yard and decent horses rather than trying to make it work locally.  Izzy has been off with Glenn today motorbiking again. As much as Abi is loving her horses, Izzy is loving her motorbiking. He as booked her in for a days coaching in half term and she cant wait. Today she was making friends with a couple of people at th...