Happy Birthday Alex!

Happy Birthday Alex!
I can't believe he is 2!
Alex got some lovely birthday pressies including some beautiful clothes from England. I'll have to get some photos of him with his new clothes and toys soon.
Last night we had a quick visit to his Grandparents and Grandma gave Alex a toddler sized broom. Today he swept the whole house! It was OK except that the bristles on the broom are very stiff and scratch the floor and he kept turning it over so the back of the broom head would bang along the floor. Still it was OK, it was his birthday so I was very tolerant :) The cat got all excited with Alex running around so she took to galloping up and down the hall, attacking the furniture at the end. That got to me so I shut her up in the laundry for some time out. I found out why she has been sicking up a bit lately, she has been eating the plant in my fish bowl! I thought she was only after the fish but today I noticed the plant isn't really dieing off, it's been eaten off.
Anyway Alex got all hot and red running around so once he worked out he could use his new broom to hit the doors and walls we both needed time out and he ended up in bed for a much needed nap. Left to his own devices he just wont slow down so I try things like story time or food time to give him a break and if that doesn't work it usually means he is over tired so the cot is best place for him and he just goes straight to sleep.
Tonight his Dad came home with a birthday cake! It hadn't occurred to me to make a cake because if we have any sort of party for Alex it wont be until next week. So a shop bought cake was good enough for a few photos to mark the occasion.
I know the family will say there's too many photos again but I don't think there can ever be too many photos of my little Superman!
He wasn't at all sure what to do with the whole cake and kept trying to grab the candle. He poked his finger all the way through to top a few times :)
He wasn't too sure about eating the cake either but usually he'll try anything once.

What a look!




I think he worked out it's a shop cake.

Little yellow car

Dad came over today with the little yellow car. Alex had so much fun in it he was upset when Dad left.

Fun with food

Another sick day of domesticity and rest. Alex has bursts of high energy that quickly turn to screams and temper so he is obviously still not feeling the best. I think Graham is getting better, either that or the medication is working.
We were expecting a visit from Dad today but he sensibly decided to avoid contamination. Maybe we'll get to infect him tomorrow :)
Alex had fun exploring the garden in between naps.

He is very cautious about stepping down anything. He climbed up the back stairs and could get down the last step on his own but balked at the higher steps. The last step has an upright support for the handrail which he used but the higher steps have just a horizontal rail which he didn't like. Will to remember this when we replace the handrail, though he probably wont need a rail by the time we replace it.
He is careful about even the tiniest step downwards, even if it's just an inch. Here's what happened when he got to a change between the concrete where the BBQ used to be.

Tonight Alex had his dinner then got to sit in his highchair with some finger food. I turned my back while on the phone and when I turned back to him he had very carefully arranged his food on the edge of his tray and was grinning like a Cheshire cat.

It was so clever I accused Graham of doing it but Alex showed me how he did it himself.

Of course the chips were too good to play with so it was meat for the tray, chip for the mouth then carrot for the tray.

Alex had his hearing test on Thursday and did really well. They said he achieved more than they required to give him a pass. So that's one more thing out of the way. Not that we were worried about his hearing but I did feel bad that I hadn't had him tested last year when I was supposed to.

Graham is bathing Alex right now and by the sounds of it the cat's in there too (the bathroom, not the bath). I better check on them, it's way past bed time for little boys.
OK correction, the cat was in the bath. She needed a wash anyway.

Chicken soup

A big happy 2nd birthday to Thomas. Thomas is another mighty miracle prem who was born just a week before Alex and just a week further in gestation. They are virtual twins. They have so many similarities except Tom is a champion climber and Alex hasn't discovered everything he can climb on yet.

We're all sick! Well Alex is almost back to normal, just gets a bit hot and tired.
Graham and I are full of cold. Alex caught it from someone on Saturday, first showed symptoms on Monday then Graham and I both started with sore throats on Wednesday, so we must have caught it from Alex.
Last night was a very uncomfortable, sleepless night. I can't breath through my nose and breathing through my mouth hurts my broken tooth. Add to that the cold and flu tablets which I forgot, until too late, give me insomnia, and Graham was snoring all night because he can't breath through his nose. So today was pretty bad. We couldn't go to playgroup and it was the first of the year at a new playgroup. Alex didn't mind though, he is still not quite right so he had a quiet day, was pretty sleepy and got all grumpy when he wanted a nap. This afternoon we went up to the shops for a few things and when we got back he went to bed and slept so long we had to wake him up for dinner. Then he ate, had a drink and went straight back to bed. He has been drinking a lot, he drank from his water bottle pretty much continuously while we shopped.

I recently moved the bookcase in the computer room. I managed to rearrange things to give me a bit more room on the shelves but I had 3 big folders which were taking up a lot of space. They were 'photo albums' from the days when I couldn't afford photo albums. I had photos glued to the back of old school papers and held in ring binders. Very shabby. So I decided to buy a photo album to hold the lot and throw out the old folders. I picked up an album while we were out today and tore all the photos out of the folders tonight and they are now all in the new album. There's no order or theme to them. They were just a collection of photos over the years. I still have a few boxes of photos to add to them but it was funny looking at these photos again. Kinda painful seeing how young and slim I was. I can't believe I always thought I was fat! I wish I could go back 20 years and knock some sense into myself (and suggest plucking my eyebrows). Oh and how about those 80's and 90's fashions! Scary stuff.

Here's some photos for your amusement.
Check out that gorgeous young thing in the middle. That's my Mom! This was 1987 so I was 18 and in my first year of uni. Got to love Moms fluro yellow socks with thongs! Actually they were my socks and that's my shirt she is wearing too. It's a single colour silk screen print I did of my year 12 school photo, or rather a section of the year photo. Even in this photo I can recognise the people in the print, that's my old friend Nik in the middle. I'm not sure why Dad took this photo. None of us are dressed for a photo and none of us seem happy to be posing for a photo so the best I can guess is he was using up a film. I can remember him taking this and I can remember having to wait for him to take it. He always took too long, now the photographer side of me understands.

Then there's this one from 1990. Taken before I went out to a friends 21st birthday party, just a few weeks after mine. It was a good party, I have some great memories from that night. The hair though is nothing but bad memories. I had my hair permed that day. It was supposed to be a light wave, instead I ended up with tiny tight curls. There was nothing I could do to fix it before the party. I bought a hair band on the way home from the hairdressers to try and tame it and that was it. It was a shocker!

This one was labeled 1983? but looking at the hair it could have been 1985 so I was either 14 or 16. Even then I was showing an need to hide behind a camera :)

Here's a couple that wouldn't fit in the album.
This is my 1st grade class photo, 1975. The year after my brother was born. It needs some repair work done and then I'll reprint it. I'm the one on the front row in the white jumper holding the sign. I was in the front row for most of my class photos and for a few years running I was left holding the sign.
It's funny I remember the names of these kids better than the people in my high school photos. Some of these faces didn't change much. A fair number of these kids went through to the same high school and the really funny thing is one of the boys in this photo became a really good friend at high school. We weren't friends in primary school and he left for another school but we ended up in the same high school and in the same little group of friends from yr 8 onwards. He is the little boy on the right hand end of the row, second from the back. He got taller by the end of high school but I still called him Pixie :)

and here's my graduating high school photo, the whole of yr 12, 1986. It would have been our 20 year reunion last year, if we'd had one.
I'm 3rd from the right on the front row. Yes my friends were boys, we were the nerds who played D&D :) That's Pixie 5th from the right on the front row.

OK that's enough reminiscing. All I'm doing is putting off going to bed because I know my cold will get worse when I lie down!

Alex says

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.