Happy Birthday Jack - 2 Today!!!

Happy birthday to my precious little miracle, Jack Lawrence Wescott, who is the grand old age of 2 today, and officially no longer a baby - boo hoo!! He was born on Wednesday 30 June 2004 at 4.55pm at 32 weeks gestation weighing a measly 2lb 15 1/2 oz (3lb for short!!) and measuring just over 39 cm. Despite having not grown for 3 weeks he was remarkably healthy and needed no CPAP (oxygen) or anything else aside from treatment for jaundice, and lipids to build up his fat supplies. This was him then

Brand new in his incubator before all the wires got attached - completely chilled out despite his early arrival.

And this is him on the morning of his 2nd birthday at 8.15 - still completely chilled out and in no rush to open his birthday presents

Just because I know people like it I'll attach the famous "dummy" picture too - taken when he was a few days old

Plans for today include visiting his pre school where he starts next week, a trip to work with Dad for an hour and then Pizza Express for his tea.

It's My Party and I'll Be Poorly if I Want To!!

Sunday was the BIG day. Jack and Jessica's 2nd Birthday party (also actually Jessica's birthday). The run up had been quite stressful, I managed to squeeze in an afternoon with Sally and Oscar on Thursday but my mind was elsewhere thinking about what was needed and I even used the meet up as an excuse for another shopping trip to get more bits and pieces.

The day started early, with me getting up and doing the sausage rolls at 7am. Then it was round to Jackie's with some of the frozen food (I have the big chest freezer so I was responsible for storing it). Then back to mine to do fruit flan and other bits and pieces including about 30 jacket potatoes!

Anyway, enough of the preparation business, it's boring. The party started at 2pm and it was soooo great to see people turn up (bar the three no shows with no phonecall etc - don't you just HATE that!!). It was fancy dress and it was amazing to see the effort that mums and dads had gone to. My mum turned up with Jack in his Quinny who looked very tired and then it transpired that Jack had a temperature. I had a feeling of deja vu, after all, he had been ill at his party last year. Stephen shot home to get some calpol etc and here he is with his daddy looking a little worse for wear You will see how flushed his cheeks are. He's supposed to be a pirate (Captain Jack) but half his costume is missing as he just really wasn't in the mood and nothing would stop him wearing his favourite England trainers.

Jack fell asleep and in and around getting food ready and socialising I managed to get some photos. I was going to use photobucket to show them all but I'll just stick what I can on normally.

Adam as a Fireman

Eli as a fairy

Olivia as a Fairy with Attitude

Gypsy Jaya (I have NO idea what she is doing in this picture!!)

Jack's Birthday Buddy Elijah as a Commando

Plumber Alfie

It was so lovely to see Jemma and family turn up and especially little Jove who I had a cuddle with he's sooooo gorgeous, and obviously has typical male hollow legs because he eats loads but remains remarkably slim!! There were a few mums with new(ish) babies and they all congretated over one side of the hall. From left to right we have Karen with Alex aged 2 weeks, Robyn (whose baby Paige aged 4 1/2 months is in the 3rd car seat). Lucia, 7 weeks, who is next to Robyn (minus mum Susannah) and then Jemma and Jove, 3 1/2 months.
We had a bouncy castle set up, complete with ball pit, though within 5 minutes the balls were everywhere BUT the ball pit. As you will see in this picture, Jaya is being ultra cautious and managed to grab herself a hard hat bless her!!

Food was served at 3.30, a bit later than we had hoped but it was just a bit manic, and I was slightly put out and fuming for a while, for reasons I will go into later. Here are some pictures of them all sitting down to eat.

Here are some mums and dads

Sally and Anne (with Susannah and Louise in the background). I have no idea what Sally's plans for that sausage are but it looks ominous!!

Sally (camera shy as usual) and Jackie (who managed to find time to eat unlike myself!)

Jessica with her Nan and Auntie Sam

Anne and Susannah

Mommie Dearest who was actually saying through gritted teeth here "Take one photo and you are dis-inherited"!!!!!

It was time to cut the cake, this year a chocolate Po. Both Jackie and I thought the other had gotten the candles so it was a mad dash to waitrose to get some which were pretty naff as you can see!!

Jack managed to perk up enough to sing Happy Birthday to himself, in fact he perked up quite a bit, because it is rumoured he was later seen having a sneaky snog with Olivia!

All in all it was a great day. EXCEPT for the fact that Jackie's boys Daniel and Matthew took it upon themselves to invite all of their friends who helped themselves to drinks and also the food I had under the bar for the kiddies, including the chocolate fingers and the party rings. I was absolutely fuming and had to stop Stephen from going of on one. All of the fizzy drinks were gone within an hour of the party starting and as it transpired at the end so had the party bags!! I did more than enough, and had taken along bits with me in case I didn't have enough which should have been highly unlikely, but Jack ended up with no party bag and all the extra sweets and chocolate had gone from the box too. The culprit left a load of those red pellet ring things from a gun in the box so I know one person who was responsible. I had made up 28 party bags and had enough for 32 party bags and there were around 23 children..............!!!

It was 6pm by the time I got home, the first time I had sat down since 7am that morning. Jack was extremely ill by this point with a temperature of 39.8 which rose throughout the night causing him to be violently sick everywhere. Managed to get him to the doctors first thing the following morning and it was as I had suspected, he had an ear infection and bacterial tonsillitis which is so bad the postules are spreading to the roof of his mouth. He's on a strong dose of antibiotics and I have been told to give him a 3 year old dosage of ibuprofen to keep a hold on his temperature. He's seeing the ENT consultant next week so hopefully the ball will start rolling for him to have grommets in and his adenoids and tonsils out. No mother wants to see their child have an operation, and even though I went through all of this with big brother Daniel it still scares me the thought of Jack going under an anaesthetic, but he can't keep on like this, 3 infections since March, 9 in the last 12 months, he's gaining no weight because he can't eat because his tonsils are enlarged and permanantly sore. He's no better this morning, can't keep anything down, so it's going to be a long week.

I leave you with my favourite photo from the party. It's of the gorgeous Jove looking as if he's still not quite sure what's going on!!

Le Bon Voyage mes Garcons

Just got back from taking the boys up to the school to see them of on their trip to france. Been up since 4am, thought I would need loads of coffee to keep me awake, but I felt sick after a couple of sips, so am making up for it now. Jackie picked us up at 5.20 and we were the first to arrive at the school a few minutes later. Unfortunately, there was a problem with the seat numbers on coach number 2 (the one the boys' were on) and a lot of swapping around, but eventually they got of, even if the school (we departed from the secondary school rather than the juniors) had forgotten to open the exit gate so lots of turning around and narrowly missingly parents' vehicles!! Going t0 be a bit tight for the ferry, so fingers crossed the traffic is good to them. They are going to Le_Chateau_de_Tertre and will be back on Friday evening.

Here they are just before departure this morning

From left to right we have Daniel P, Billy, Calum, Phil and my Daniel. All looking very "touristy" it has to be said!! Billy's mum Janine, will be the one ringing me to say they've arrived safely.

Here are "my boys". Phil insisting on doing his Gromit impression as usual!!

Other news, just while I'm on here. We are moving oop north! Probably Manchester, and probably Droylsden to be near my sister and her family. We are fed up with the situation between Stephen's younger brother and his dad etc here so we are going to be near mine, where we will have the support network when my health deteriorates. I need to know that if I have days when I'm so unwell I can't get out of bed that someone is going to be there for Stephen to help him with the kids, we don't want the added stress of Stephen having to take unpaid leave to look after us all. The reaction from Stephen's family when Jack was born is enough to tell us that we can't rely on them, Stephen nearly became both a dad and a widow in the same breath, but his family didn't care, they didn't ring to see if things were alright, and he coped with getting one boy of on a school trip, one to school, seeing me in hospital and Jack in SCBU all on his own until my mum got back from holiday. It's not just that, my nephew who is the same age as the boys is in Manchester, my niece who is 9 months older than Jack and theoretically they could be in the same class at school together is there and so is my lickle sister who I barely see and our other halves are getting repeatedly hacked of about the phonebills when we spend 3 hours on the phone to each other! My dad is an hour and a half to the east, and Stephen's other brother is a lot closer than he is now in Miserablebro. We're looking to put the house on the market in the new year, giving Stephen time to get a new job, probably contracting, then we will rent for 6 months in Manchester giving us time to find something we want at our pace rather than frantically trying to complete down here, complete up there etc all on the same day, so I would go up 2 weeks before completion, move in and Stephen would stay down here to finish things of. I'm not sure about what is going to happen with my job, I could transfer up there, I could ring them up today and tell them to hold of another year and get me a job in Manchester, I'm just not sure, we can't get a mortgage if I'm not working, so I'll need to have a really good think. Hopefully, this time next year I will be reporting from Manchester!

Just looked at the weather forecast and all I can say is Mr Sunshine, get your bloody hat on for sunday or there'll be hell to pay!

One Demon For Sale - VGC

For sale I have a small demon, approaching two who answers to the name of Jack. He does not yet have a forked tongue or tail, nor is he sprouting horns, yet he is a bona fide demon through and through. Demonic behaviour includes (and this is just this morning!)

• Stealing a box of flapjacks from the kitchen cupboard and then sneaking upstairs and sitting on his mums bed and scoffing them
• throwing 4 new toilet rolls into the toilet, then fishing them out and then putting them back in the packet in the hope that no one will notice
• climbing onto the top bunk in his brothers room and proceeding to take his nappy of and chuck it out of the top window
• and the ultimate in demonic behaviour - getting a permanent marker and drawing all over his brothers' tv with it.

All offers considered and I'm sorry but I do not accept returns.

Two Fat Ladies!!!

Yesterday was the school fete, usually held on a saturday but because of England playing a footie game or something it was moved to the Sunday. Jackie does Mini IQ parties, books for children of all ages and she decided to run a stall at the fete and I went along to help her. Here we are just before opening, rearing to go, trembling with excitement.................NOT. Perhaps the title two fat ladies is a bit extreme, but you can almost imagine us 20 years from now sat there, 3 stone heavier holding up our heaving bosoms!!

We sold.......wait for it......................1 cockin pickin book!!!!!! Jackie made £6.99. I guess it was just the wrong forum yesterday and far too hot to be stood around ordering books. Still, at least we both got a tan from sitting in the glorious sun for 4 hours! And I stunk the field out with the crayfish salad I had lovingly prepared earlier that morning!

Had a crap weekend on Ebay, sold a lot of Jack's summer clothes from last year, actually I rephrase that, I TRIED to sell a lot of Jack's summer clothes from last year, but I'm slowly learning that they just don't do well on Ebay and I guess everyone was out in the sunshine yesterday afternoon. Made just under £100, which may sound a lot, but when you take out listing, paypal, ebay final value fees etc it's not very much and less than I usually make.

I've realised now that if you want a bargain of Ebay that you either keep or sell on for a massive profit you need to go on at the ungodly hour of about 6, and if you want to do a post without any hitches on Blogger then you need to get up at 4 am and do it, as I have this morning!! It's so hot at the moment, Jack isn't sleeping well because his ears hurt him at night that I've not slept past 5.30 at all for about a week now. I'll probably sleep even worse next week worrying about the boys on their school trip in France, a week today we'll be making our way up to the school as the coach leaves at 5.45 - god I can't believe my boys are soooooo grown up now that they go on school trips to another country!! And in less than 3 weeks Jack officially leaves babydom and becomes a proper lickle boy. Still, it means I can do more of the things I want to do now, go out and not worry about whether Jack is getting a bottle when he should be, if his nappy needs changing etc. I finally threw the bottles away last week, they had been languishing in the back of the cupboard for months and I don't know why I clung onto them, with Daniel and Phil I chucked them all in the bin at 8 months and proclaimed them permanently on trainer cups!! I guess that was down to picking them up from the childminders at the end of a long day and being given all their bottles, unwashed not even rinsed out from the day and in Daniel's case all completely full because he wouldn't drink milk, then walking home and having to wash them all, get the teats sterilised and more bottles prepared before I could even think about cooking dinner, or, taking my coat of!!

Stephen got his consultation appointment through for the snip, October 31st!!! Bloody ridiculous it takes another 6-8 weeks after that for it to be done, so we're looking at just over 6 months from now. He's enquired about doing it private but it's not cheap so we just have to pray that the classic scenario that happens so many times doesn't happen to us - we end up pregnant whilst waiting for a vasectomy!! Going to a meeting thing about adoption on 25 July which should be interesting. I've had a few predictions suggest I'll be pregnant by then, mmmmm not if I can help it, even if it means a padlock!!!

Right, it's 5.15 so I'll go and do something else, like make the packed lunches

On This Day

......15 years ago, I started in the civil service!!! I reported to duty at the Crown Court at Southwark on the 10 June 1991

...... 11 years ago my beloved grandmother died on the 10 June 1995. She lived long enough to see her first two great grandchildren, another set of twins in the family, Daniel and Phil and then died peacefully in her sleep from the complications of Parkinsons.

Also congratulations to my friend Karen who gave birth to her second son Alex on Wednesday 7 June this week, 2 1/2 weeks early weighing a healthy 7lb 12 oz

Also to my brother in law and his girlfriend Caryn, who gave birth last night to a healthy baby boy Liam John. We still don't speak to them, and can't see us doing so any time soon, but I wish them well.

Good luck to England who are playing today - I've spent a fortune on footie kits for the boys so you had better do bloody well!!!!

The Bully (by Phil Smith aged 11 and 3 months).

The Bully


Here comes the bully six feet tall,
He treats me like a bowling ball,
Taking all my dinner money,
He seems to think its really funny,

He looks at me face to face,
I’d run away but he’d just chase,
He laughs and gives me a hard poke,
He really thinks it’s all a joke,

I realised that I had to tell,
I waited till the last school bell,
I told the teacher I felt really sad,
She said she knows he’s really bad,

She said that she would sort it out,
I felt so great I had to shout,
It’s taken all my fears away,
Now it’s time for them to pay,

The school is running a massive anti bullying campaign, and all the children in the school were invited to enter into a poem competition and the winning poem would become part of their anti bullying statement. Phil won it. I'm so immensly proud of him. It's even more poignant as both older boys have been victims of bullying fairly recently at the school. It's a sad part of life and I personally feel that the older we get the more bullies we come across in our own lives, especially at work, but even among our group of friends, there is always someone who can make another person feel downright terrible, it just takes a simple act or comment and it can devastate a person. Fortunately the older we get the easier it is to move on and away from it, but when you are a child and it's at school it's so much more difficult and I'm just glad that both my boys have managed to handle it well.

This and That

I haven't done a proper post in what seems like ages, and I like to think that quite a lot has happened but, um, it hasn't really, well a few things but, well, you know......!!

Daniel and Phil are at their dad's this week, started of as the weekend and has progressed into all of half term, and they are back tomorrow as we are of to the Biggin Hill Air Show on saturday where I am doing my bit for the school and spending five hours in what promises to be blazing heat blowing up inflatable hammers and the such like!! Still I get in for free, the rest of the family get cheap tickets being locals etc (bit of a sweetner much like they give the residents of Alton for all the upheaval the extra traffic causes).

We are now into Jack's 24th month, he will be 2 four weeks tomorrow (friday) how scary is that?!! The party is booked, for 3 weeks time, he will be having it with Jessica, the cake is almost ordered from The_Cake_Store they are the people that used to do all the baking bits etc on the Generation Game, the bakery in Beckenham is called Slatters and you go in there and they have the pictures of the bakers with Brucey on the show, I used to live just round the corner and they are one of the best I've come across, and I've been about a fair bit. Jackie and I were totting up the invite list the other day and it's quite monstrous, perhaps we should get a monstrous cake too!! We're certainly getting a chocolate one this year, I had a La La from them last year, just in the normal sponge but it was still quite a lot as it's about 16 inches long and twice the thickness of shop bought cakes. I can just imagine one or two people who are reading this salivating at the prospect of a 16 inch long chocolate cake!!

Last week I met up with Sally and Oscar for coffee and lunch. Quite funny as just after we met up both boys disappeared into different shops leaving some poor woman to look after our buggies and bags whilst we went of on a rescue mission! It amazes me I'm not a size 8 the amount of runaround Jack gives me and I'm sure Sally feels the same. Oscar is such a charmer, reminds me so much of Phil at that age, will talk to anyone who will listen and he kept pointing out that Sally was his mummy which was so sweet. Phil's trait was to tell people in supermarket queues he had 16 teeth, or that 5 and 5 were 10. Lord knows where he got it all from, he just knew that from about 18 months and that was it, by Jack's age I could hardly get a word in edgeways, thankfully Daniel was much more into meaningful looks than speaking, but that was his down to the problems with his ears and throat, Jack is the same, apart from "Oh God" "Oh Wow" "Oh No" "Oh Dear Dad" "Yesu Crust" (Jesus Christ we think!) and the word "Crash" at about 2000,000 decibels!! Anyway, had a fab day with Sally, took a few pics (of course!!) whilst we were lunching in KFC (never let it be said that the pair of us don't eat in style!).

Here is Oscar venting his anger at the whole John Prescott fiasco - Jack doesn't do politics........!

Here is Oscar demonstrating how he got bitten by friend Elijah and Jack can barely contain his shock!

And here - both all smiles!

Still nothing from work about returning, getting a bit irate now about it, Stephen is about to go permanent which means a drop in salary and with 2 boys starting secondary school in a few months I have lots of uniform to buy and at the moment I don't know how. They are of to France in two weeks for week, trying not to be worried about it, but you can't help it, they have a ferry crossing to make and some of the kids going are not that sensible and you just pray that they do as they are told and don't ruin it for the vast majority of the group who are. £600 the trip is cost - that could have sent the whole family on holiday, never mind two 11 year olds for five days!

My blood results came back ok, things are stable, in fact if you took my creatinine and my urea out of the equation (they are the toxins that build up in the blood if your kidneys don't work properly at draining them out which people like me don't) then I look like a remarkably healthy person, even my iron levels are only 0.4 below normal at 11.3 so that's good, although they were at 13 9 months ago, but they were 10.5 4 months ago. Thing that gets my goat is that I worked so hard getting my cholesterol down from 6.1 to lower than 5 and it's now 4 exactly, without the help of statins etc, just plain dieting and now the guidelines are that it should be 4 or lower, so I've got even more work to do - give me strength. AND I've got to lose another 10 kilos, about 1 1/2 stone, aiming for the anorexic chick look which apparantly equals good health yeah right. My bp was higher two weeks ago that when I was 3 stone heavier so I've no idea what's going on there.

Stephen has set the ball rolling to have a vasectomy, we aren't going to risk having any more children, it's not my health that is the main issue, it is the chance of having a successful pregnancy, which is not that high, I've given birth 5 weeks early and 8 weeks early, who knows how early another baby would be and the problems that would incur as a result. Daniel and Phil were only a bit early and haven't suffered any set backs as a result, Jack did a 4 week incarceration in Special Care, with nothing wrong with him other than low blood sugar, low birthweight and jaundice but again, hasn't suffered any setbacks as a result, another baby may be born 11 or 12 weeks early, maybe more and knowing that that is a real probability is just not fair on the baby or on the family as a whole. So we are going to try and adopt, we're not keen on adopting a baby, but then we don't want a child older than Jack either, so if it takes 2 years to go through the process then we would be looking at a 2 or 3 year old. Stephen would prefer another boy, and I hate to admit it so would I, but when push comes to shove I really don't give a monkeys. I was looking on a website today of children under our borough who are available for adoption and I quite happily could have taken them all in, no matter what their age, skin colour, background etc, many of them have developmental problems as a result of a really bad start in life but it doesn't bother me in the slightest, I have experience of being a mum of a child with specific needs and whilst it's not a walk in the park, it's the going through the diagnosis part which is the hardest rather than the dealing with the problem itself. anyway I have sent of for a pack etc and Stephen and I will look at it over the next few months before taking the next step.

I am going to sign of now because blogger is doing my head in, it's taking me ages to type all this, and about half an hour for the words to come up on the page because it's so slow, and deleting is even slower!!