Alex has a cold

Yesterday we were supposed to go to a funeral. Not something I was looking forward to but it was important and I really wanted to be there. We got ready to go and Alex looked very smart but DH ended up going on his own. Alex had a cold and we just didn't think a 3 hour funeral was a good idea when he wasn't well. It would have been hard enough keeping him quiet normally, worse when he wasn't happy.
Today he is a lot better. He had a couple of days of runny nose, temperature and wheezy breathing and today his nose has almost dried up. He is wheezing more today and off his food but I think he has got over this very quickly.
In general Alex doesn't seem to get sick as often as other kids and when he does he seems to get over it quicker. The exception being anything that hits his lungs, that's what worries us about colds. We credit the INIS trial for his strength. Alex joined the trial when he was in the NICU and he was very sick. He had a staph infection and was on 3 different antibiotics at the time. We don't know if he got the IVIG or the placebo but pretty much straight away he 'turned the corner'. The nurses in the NICU used to talk about babies turning the corner and I guess we took it as just a reassuring saying that things would get better but when Alex joined the INIS trial he didn't just turn the corner, it was a high speed handbrake skid around a sharp U-turn bend! Ever since whenever Alex resists something or gets over something quickly we put it down to an immune boost from the trial. He is due for his 2 year corrected assessment for the trial in about 3 months, that's probably why this is on my mind now :) Before then he has his second birthday! We don't have any plans for that yet. Been more preoccupied with his hearing test tomorrow. I guess once that is over we can start thinking about his birthday.
I've been having constant headaches for the last few weeks. They started the day I had my hair cut and got my new monitor. The first night I put it down to the fumes from the hairdressers. When the headaches continued I was worried it was my new monitor. Then the tooth ache started. I think either a filling or the tooth around a filling cracked. Today a bit of the tooth broke away and the headache almost went away too. So I guess the headaches are linked to the tooth and both are feeling better now except when I eat or drink anything. I have to wait 3 weeks to get in to see the dentist :( unless they have a cancellation before then.
My new monitor is beautiful! I was using a 17" Benq LCD and it was great but just not big enough for photo work. So I spent a few months looking at larger LCDs and finally got a 22" wide Benq. It went back the same day! It had 2 dead pixels, one right in the center, and shocking light bleed. Instead I got a 22" wide Samsung LCD. It is perfect! I'm not sure I have it calibrated correctly yet. My old monitor was a perfect match for the prints from the lab I use. This one is still too bright, I'm having trouble getting the blacks black enough and I'm not sure about the colour cast yet. I guess I wont know for sure until my next print order. Still the 1680x1050 res is really nice and I can have multiple documents open at once side by side.

Alex had his haircut when I went to the hairdressers. It was sad to see his curls cut off but since then his hair has thickened a bit which is good. Afterwards his Dad and Grumpa took him swimming while I had my hair done.



No my hair isn't really pink, it's mostly blonde, some of it is almost white. I wanted to get rid of the last of the brown dye, which was going red. I took these photos to show the colour of my hair but then I couldn't get the colour to look right on the new monitor so I decided to play with pink.


I made Alex's icecream with mashed banana today. I haven't had much luck getting him to eat banana so I thought it would work in icecream. Nope he didn't want any. Hopefully tomorrow he will like it. It really is very sweet, I'm going to try just half the sugar next time I make it.

Well DH is back at work after 6 weeks holidays so it's about time I got back to blogging.
It's been very crowded with 3 of us at home and impossible to concentrate on anything (like blogging) so here's my chance. I thought I'd be able to get this done today while Alex slept but things have changed in the last 6 weeks and he doesn't sleep as much. Instead today I had to give him all the attention he has become used to getting from 2 parents at home. It's been a tiring day. All good though, we had a lot of fun.
Alex has been talking more, or maybe I'm just understanding more. Today I noticed he says ma (more) when he sees some food he wants and na (no) if I offer him the wrong food. It's so nice to see him wanting food enough to tell me about it. I'll have to make him some more icecream tomorrow. Yes he likes icecream and like most prem parents we are so happy to find something he likes so he gets to eat 'junk' food like icecream. If I make it myself I know it's all natural, no preservatives, flavouring or colouring.

I have a lot of photo news to blog so I'll start with the most recent pics. Alex went to stay with his Grandparents for Australia day which meant his Dad and I could get out and take some photos. This holiday really missed the freedom of being able to come and go at any hour on any impulse. Can't do that with Alex, it takes an hour to get him fed and packed for a trip out and then we have to take so much stuff with us, and he is usually asleep when we get our late night impulses.
So Thursday night Alex stayed with Nana and we went went for a midnight walk with the cameras practicing night photography.


We had planned on staying up all night so we could get to the Australia Day hot air balloon rise at dawn but we gave up at 3:45am and went to bed for an hour. We made it to the park while it was still dark at 5:30am. I didn't realise the park would be dark, we couldn't see where we were treading and had to go by sound to find the balloons behind the trees. We got there as the first balloon was filling so we got to see them all fill before they set off. It was very overcast, rained the night before, so there wasn't much of a sunrise to see but we got some nice photos. The earlier shots with the sky still dark are the most impressive.
There were a lot of people and a surprising number of photographers. We had to be careful not to trip over the tripods :) I think we were all taking the same shots. Every time I moved to get a new angle I noticed a few other photographers following. I used my Sigma 18-125mm lens but found I really needed a wider lens. I had to keep moving further and further away as the balloons filled. Graham was using the 100-300mm lens and really couldn't fit much in. Makes me wonder what the photographers with the big L class zooms were shooting.









After the balloons we had a nice relaxed breakfast in town, about 7:30am and then we went to Brighton to catch up with the Sydney Cruising guys but we didn't go on the cruise itself. I was getting a little bit too much sun by then and we needed coffee so we headed home. We were home by midday to relax (do the washing). I think it was the most I've ever done on Australia Day.