Saturday, September 09, 2006

Sneezes & Tears

It's been a bit of a mixed bag, the rest of this week.

Wednesday we had some bad news from the vets. Took Romeo & Juliet for their booster injections and to have JuJu's heart murmur checked. It's barely audible now and definitely nearly gone, which was fantastic - but then the vet gave Romeo the once over and told us the shock news that he has now developed a "very significant" heart murmur himself, which apparently is much worse than JuJu's ever was. :-((( Didn't really want to hear that. And still no news about Merlin's blood tests, that really is dragging on. And we're still not really any the wiser about Jon's foot and white blood cells either, despite an update from the doctors.

Thursday, on the other hand, was a good day. Thursday afternoon I took Emily and Romy to a soft play area for the first time in ages and they had a great play there for a couple of hours. While they tore around wearing themselves out I wrote eight pages of my first course assignments, so that was good all round. In the morning, Emily had been working hard on various English tasks and she also did a great job of typing up her research into various cloud types in Word, complete with pictures. At various times during the week she's also done lots more weather experiments, including making ice crystals, making frost and making a mirror nephoscope (which was hugely fun and basically involves watching clouds in a mirror.....could do that for hours!) She's also researched and written up how rain, hail and snow form and what the differences between them are, and we've finished watching the rather wonderful Wild Weather DVD.

Friday morning was horrible. Emily woke up in a foul mood and didn't want to get up; she was sad, she was tired, she was generally miserable and she wouldn't/couldn't tell us why. By the time we got downstairs she was in tears and still not explaining why; this coupled with Grandad demanding to know what the matter was and why Emily was crying "again" - according to him she's "always crying".... - just about broke my patience and I ended up in tears too. Turns out Emily was just having a sad morning, about nothing in particular. We all have those, I guess. I know I do - but when it's Emily I somehow think there HAS to be an explanation, there HAS to be an underlying problem....it's really hard to be told that she doesn't know what's wrong, she's just sad. As a parent that makes you feel pretty lousy, useless and powerless to help. Think it's a combination of still feeling a little bit lonely at times and probably hearing far too much about our own adult issues and problems, which worries her. Anyway, an hour or so later Jon had smoothed over the cracks and we were both OK again - but at times like that you can't help wondering "would she be happier in school?" In my head I know she's generally extremely happy and thriving here at home....but this HE route we've chosen is never free of doubts in its darker moments, and Friday was definitely one of those.

With hindsight, Emily was probably also just feeling under the weather because sure enough yesterday evening the sneezes arrived....then she had a very, very sleepless night with a very sore throat and high temperature. Yep, it's cold season again. This morning she could hardly speak, bless her heart. She still wanted to go to ballet, though, especially as it was the first lesson back at the new studio with the new teacher, so off we trundled. She seems to have enjoyed it, although the new teacher is VERY strict - but then that's probably a good thing if they're actually going to make enough progress to be ready for these exams in November. K's still coming to the Saturday lessons after all, although not to the Thursday ones, so she and Emily were delighted to see each other and had a good play and a run around afterwards as we looked after K for a while until her Mum could get back from the other studio where she had to pick up K's little sister.

This afternoon we've just snuggled up and played a few Harry Potter board games, and read oodles more of the Order of the Phoenix - just got the part where Harry has to have Occlumency lessons with Snape, much to Emily's delight. Hopefully Emily will be feeling a bit better tomorrow morning as she doesn't want to miss Karate and then we're going to a cats protection league thingy in the afternoon. Not quite sure where work and deadlines this weekend are going to fit in, but I'm sure we'll think of something!

Anyway, here's Romeo, our latest heart patient, showing his patriotic nature asleep on the coal bunker under our England flags ;-)

3 comments:

Elaine, Ellies Treasures said...

Sorry to hear you've had a "bit of a week". Our vet told us that heart murmurs in cats is rare, but both our have them apparently! Poor Emily, hope she feels much better soon. My K (9) sometimes wakes us in a sad mood like Emily did, and eventually she ends up crying as she just doesn't know why she feels so down in the dumps. I put it down to hormones in the end - luckily it doesn't happen too often, but I've notice she can get suddenly grumpy once a month. Growing up fast I guess! Elle

Ruth said...

I hope Romeo is O.K and Emily cold is better soon.

Jax Blunt said...

I often wake up feeling sad, don't see why children should be different, although can see how as parents we would want to fix it.