General update

I haven't blogged much recently. Mostly I'm on facebook nowadays.

Also, this month as been mega busy. By the end of the month we will have spent time in Whangarei, Havelock Nth and Christchurch. It's a great opportunity to teach the kids about maps.

Anyway, I'll load some photos soon of our travels and mad Christmas.


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Its been a year!

In a few days time it will have been a year since I changed from being a paid worker to being a full time stay at home dad.

I have had a little bit of time to reflect on the last year. It seems like time has gone very fast and things have changed considerably (for the better) since Oct 2009. I am incredibly grateful for those who have walked with me (in one way or another) over this last year.

It will be interesting to see what the next year holds.

My broccoli that wasn't

I planted some broccoli a while back and it grew and grew but no sign of any heads. Then all of a sudden we got this... a cauliflower! A small cauliflower.

So... cauliflower cheese for dinner tonight.

Some weekend pics

Larissa is home

You wouldn't believe it!!!

We have been getting Katya's IV medication from the paediatric ward at Wellington Hospital. Katya picked up a virus that made her puke. We are pretty sure it is a virus as she is so high on anti-biotics no bacteria could have survived in her. And I am pretty sure it is from the play room in the ward.

She passed it onto me but I managed to just feel shady for 24 hours.

Claire however is is now puking like mad.

A nice touch from our hospital system. A place you go to to get well and we end up getting made sick.

I have been busy disinfecting surfaces around the house so we don't get any re-infection.

It seems to only be a 24 hour thing so hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.

Youtube Channel

Check out my YouTube Channel

http://www.youtube.com/user/symgardiner

A bit of an update

Things are starting to go well at the moment.

Claire is coming off one of the drugs and it is making a huge difference. She is coming up tomorrow for an interview for a job and has another job that looks even better in the pipe line. We have scheduled that she will return to Wellington permanently on the 20th.

I have resigned from my job and will look after the kids etc from the 19th Oct. So basically we are doing a role swap. We think that Claire working will give her a bit of space to heal completely.

The plan is that we will get settled and then look to move Larissa back down here in a few weeks.

About the only thing not tracking is CYFS who are being quite unhelpful at the moment. Hopefully they can get themselves together and realise we have things tracking well and down't need their "help".

Tonight the husband of one of my colleagues came around and started plastering the alterations that we had to do to get consent. It is looking good. I plan to have that complete before Claire comes back.

I am looking forward to having my family back together although it will be very different not working and focusing on the kids.

Weekend and CYFS

We had a great weekend up north with Larissa. Forgot my camera so no pics.

Larissa is bubbling along. She loves her jolly jumper and will give a great big grin and then bounce like mad. If you are lucky she will do a little squeal for joy as well.

Katya was excellent. She wore her glasses and processors practically constantly. She is playing with her cousins better and better each time she goes up. AND her flying is just legendary. She was pretty tied on the late flight we got back but sat in her seat and pulled her seat belt together like a pro.

Today we had a good morning and then Katya has a huge 3 hour sleep. She has a little cold/cough which I think she was trying to sleep off. Either that or she was really enjoying her own bed.

We also had a visit from CYFS. I have to say I feel the same feeling I had dealing with Maternal Mental Health (that sense of dealing with people who think they can help but actually can't). They can provide absolutely no useful support to us but want us to dance through hops (regular meetings, Risk Management Plans, Reports, Letters from Doctors...). This of course is not exceptionally helpful with the stresses and strains we are currently facing.

The most outstanding part of our meeting was their desire to have a Risk Management Plan for when Claire re-enters the family. I was happy to do this (I have already thought it all through anyway) and asked for them to provide their standard template so I could fill it out. Hmmm... they don't have one!!! Can you believe it? They say that they need to be happy with the RMP but don't have a standard one so you know what issues you need to address. They eventually agreed to develop one and send it to me.

The lack of systemisation in these softer areas of social work and mental health has been excused for far too long. The rigour of structured processes with the ability to slide outside these disciplines from time to time is so needed and would be the biggest revolution in their respective areas on a few decades.

So what started as a pretty good day crashed and burned in the afternoon with the CYFS visit. It is so frustrating dealing with people who think they are being helpful but are actually a hinderance. Fortunately the evening was pretty good. I bought Katya a bathing doll as she has not been happy having a bath. This worked. I put the doll and her little bath in the bath and Katya got keen to follow!!! And her bump around her processor has gone down as well.

So hopefully back on the upwards track again tomorrow.

Weekend Photos with Katya and her cousin

Another up North photo

Larissa and progress

Tomorrow I am off north to see Larissa for the weekend. It is pretty exciting but there are some nerves. I am hoping she still recognises me and also that Claire and Katya will have a good weekend.

We have had an interesting week. Some downs but a lot of ups. A bit of normality is returning to life and we are starting to get a bit of a pattern to life again after 4 pretty rough months.

We have got a very very experienced (37 years of work, Masters, etc) faith-based therapist involved to help Claire. She is very expensive but the best people in the profession could recommend. This has caused a bit of a stink with Material Mental Health who seem to struggle to deal with an outside therapist (interesting there appear not to be any established protocols for this situation which I would have thought was fairly normal. Lots of patients make use of private services in conjunction with DHB services every day... odd!!!). Claire feels these sessions are very useful and I am hopeful they will provide the catalyst to the change that is needed to get Claire well again.

Well... lots of photos of Larissa will come over the next few days!!!

Hmmm.......

New iPhone ap!

Some recent pics

These are some recent pics of Larissa with her cousins, me bathing her in Whangarei and Katya the punk!

An exciting morning

So... Pete has required me to make a post on our exciting morning.

We decided to go to Porirua via the toy library. As we were coming up the Ngaraunga Gorge our ever reliable Toyota completely died. I was in the far right lane so had some quick work to get myself off the left hand side.

All the electrics were working so it was something fuel related.

I got Claire and Katya off the motoway and gave Pete a call to give us a tow. However the place is covered in cameras so the boys in blue (and floro green) turned up. I suppose it is quite exciting to be towed by the cops.

Anyway... looks like a new fuel pump is needed. Not so impressed that a 137km Toyota needs a new fuel pump. Then again it probably reflects the quality of petrol we have in NZ. Interestingly Claire had just filled up at Shell with the tank very empty.

Quick Update

Both the kids are asleep so it it is time for a quick update.

• Larissa is growing and growing. We have had to move her out of a capsule and into a backwards facing car set. She is grabbing and cooing. We never had the cooing with Katya.
• Katya went to Kindergarten this last week for her induction. She starts next term (two weeks time). We had a discussion with our deaf adviser and the Kindy head teacher. It looks like we will get some really good support for the Kindy as they work with Katya. Katya's verbal cognitive skills are rapidly growing. Her speech skills are just starting to develop. Kindy will be great for this.
• Claire continues to be very unwell. We have a meeting this Tues with a more experienced consultant shrink to get a second opinion. Hopefully this will give us a better plan pushing forward as to-date things have not worked. We face some significant adjustments to our family's life with this over the next few months, particularly if we don't make any traction on Tuesday.
• As for me... I'm just tied. My work has been amazingly tolerant. That said, what has been achieved over the last 12months has been pretty cool at work. As I have said to my work colleagues... this is the first place I have ever worked where there are no weak links, the environment is great and basically we are just humming. We have one more big event this year and then it is set up for next year.

So that is us in a nut shell.

A strange plant

We have covered our place in agapanthus. They are either blue, purple or white.

However we have found this one growing that is primarily white with just a touch of purple. I did not think the different colours crossed so this is a strange plant.

Te Papa

This morning we went to Te Papa. It was seriously busy. The place is growing on me. While it is butt ugly outside, the interior has some nice spaces.

Last night Mark came around and ripped out some wiring in the house. Now there is no power in the walls I need to remove. He also put some new sockets and switches in.

Back home in Wellington

We are now back home in Wellington.
These are two pics from the trip.

In Beijing we had about 7 hours. Not long enough to get a hotel but long enough to need to sleep. We stuck Katya into my new fur lined and trimmed leather jacket (a small indulgence). She slept a wonderful sleep, even with lots of noise. ALso Beijing Airport was very cold... especially when you did NOT have a fur lined jacket.

The second picture is in Shanghai. It was snowing but the snow was so wet it melted as it landed.

I will write later when I am not jet lagged about our trip... which was fascinating.

On returning home we have found that our cat, Gemma, is gone. She disappeared on Thursday and the neighbours who were looking after her have not seen (nor heard) from her. We presume she has wandered off and died. She was blind, deaf and crazy. She was also about 19 years old.

This is Gemma about a year ago.

Hmmm...

Someone got caught and was trying to extricate herself ASAP.