Tuesday, April 30, 2013

A bit of R 'n' R...

Over the last few days, we've introduced Nana Jenny to the little piece of paradise that is Himatangi Beach. Regular readers of this blog will know that we head up there relatively often, for a bit of r 'n' r and general family downtime.

It's not the prettiest part of New Zealand, and the accommodation options aren't the most luxurious. So, I was thinking....why do we like it there so much?

I've come up with lots of reasons. Firstly, it's a place where the sky is endless and the sea is endless and the beach is endless. A place like that is always good for the soul. It makes life simple again and allows us to get things back in perspective.


It's a place where it's always ok to open a beer or pour a glass of wine at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, with no feeling of guilt, as there is literally nothing else at all that you *have* to be doing.


It's a place where the beach is always interesting. It's full of shells and pumice stones and fish bones and lots and lots of driftwood. So you can make pretend "shops", build driftwood teepees and collect bits and pieces. The kids enjoy it so much, and the strange thing is that we do too. Something about being in Himatangi slows us down and makes just pottering around really enjoyable.


It's a place for being outside all the time and feeling refreshed. Where you can climb up tall sand dunes to get to the beach, where the wind blows through your hair and where we always go for afternoon runs. For Molly in particular, it's good to be at the beach, as her skin always improves. But for all of us in general - we always feel invigorated and healthy while we're there.


It's a place where there's always time for lots of playing. As well as spending lots of time on the beach, rugby, tennis and waterfights also tend to feature in most days' activities. The kids are always really, really happy.


It's a place which never changes, yet it is always different. We always go exploring and we always find something new (like a giant mound of hay). There's always excitement about something. 


It's a place where, no matter what time of year and what the weather, there's always time for an ice cream from the dairy. And at just $1 for a cone and a choice of about twenty or thirty flavours, how could we ever not do this?!


And it's a place where, even with two noisy children, I can always somehow find the time for peace and quiet, a good book and a deckchair, or a sunset walk along the beach...





Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Mainstream Medicine vs Alternative Medicine


It’s the school holidays at the moment, but it’s been a fairly low couple of weeks in our household. Both kids are truly knackered. Molly’s skin is still raw and sore. Jake’s been away a lot for work. There’s been a lot of rain (which is absolutely great for the farmers but not for Nana Jenny who doesn’t like rain!)

So yes, Nana Jenny is over once again for a couple of weeks. Despite the tiredness and the rain, she’s managed some special times with both kids – she's pottered on the beach with them, not minding at all when they collected the stinkiest specimens of fish bones in the world, she’s taken them to the theatre, the Marine Education Centre, swimming lessons, she’s made a den and played endless games of Bey Blades with Alfie.


She's also watched Molly doing ballet and Alfie playing his first night-time rugby match (with Jake as assistant coach!) and she's tolerated the chaotic visit to McDonalds for dinner afterwards. 


Meanwhile, last week I had an amazing experience at the homeopath’s with Molly. The lady we saw, Therese Boyle (I must give her a plug!) had been recommended to me from so many different sources that I really had to give her a try.

The appointment included some kinesiology (muscle testing) – I have no idea whatsoever how this actually works and it seems completely illogical to my western-educated mind, but Molly showed really strong responses.

The appointment was fascinating and there’s far too much for me to write about here, but in a nutshell we have identified some reasons why Molly’s immune system is firing all over the place and have some Probiotics and other remedies to try to sort it out.

Within 48 hours, it was clear that something major was happening in her little body. Her eczema patches were healing up, drying up, and flaking off (all over the house). The big red rings around her eyes had disappeared. She is still sore and still tired, but something’s definitely happening. Watch this space, we’ll keep you posted. 

Back to mainstream medicine.....last week, we also took Molly for her RAST test and unfortunately it was a terrible experience. She was so brave while she was there, but afterwards she nearly fainted and has become more and more traumatised by the day. Every evening she’s been crying at bedtime in case she ever has to have a blood test again.

But yesterday evening we tried something pretty cool. On Therese Boyle’s advice, I asked Molly to draw a picture of her feelings about the blood test. It was an AMAZING series of pencil sketches, in fact it was so good I would have loved to have kept it. But Therese’s advice was to rip it all up and throw it away (analogy = we are throwing those bad thoughts and fears away).

Molly insisted that the A4 sheet had to be torn into the most tiny pieces imaginable, so the whole process took a very long time. We finally threw it all out – way past bed time - and I explained that the men will take it to the dump and burn it. And last night was the first time since the blood test that she didn’t cry at bedtime. Result!

(Alfie joined in the activity as well, as he has had a few bad dreams lately and wanted them to go away. His picture was of a haunted house and several cute looking blue ghosts saying “ooooo”. He too slept through last night. I thoroughly recommend this activity!)

Next, we wait again. The blood test results are due within the next week. 

Friday, April 12, 2013

Taking it easy...

On account of Molly being so under the weather at the moment, we're taking it easy this week. We've skipped all her usual after school activities, and instead we're keeping life simple and relaxed.

Alfie too, is getting tired. It's nearly the end of his first term at big school, so it's only to be expected. Sometimes I think about the UK school system that I grew up with, and how much sense it makes from the childrens' point of view. In the UK they have 3 terms a year (compared to 4 terms here in NZ), so each of their terms is theoretically longer than ours, but they get a week's break in the middle of each term.

Here each of our four terms is about 11 weeks long - with no rest!

So we usually find ourselves slowing down a lot for the last couple of weeks of term. It's actually usually quite a nice time, and this week has definitely been pretty lovely and relaxed, so I thought I'd post a few pictures of what we've been doing in general this week.

Autumn has most definitely arrived, so there's a real chill in the air each morning and our blankets have come back out of the cupboards for night time, but most afternoons have been warm and sunny so we've played after school most days in the school playground.....(hey, Alfie still has a certain amount of energy to burn!)


Despite the ongoing tiredness, we've still found the energy for scootering home from school...


Most days we've been coming home and having snacks in the garden.


And I'm trying to get plenty of fruit into Molly as I read an article recently about the benefits of fruit for kids with eczema.... (I took a picture simply because I just love the colours of Autumn fruit!)


We've whiled away hours and hours just blowing bubbles on the deck...


Homework isn't so full-on now we're near the end of term, and most of it doesn't feel like hard work - it's mainly just spelling, reading and maths.  Molly will happily sit and read a book for hours after school (she finished the latest one in 2 days), and doing "Mathletics" on the laptop is still innocently considered to be a real treat!


Meanwhile, Alfie's current obsession is with Bey Blades, and he now has eight of them. They're the first thing he grabs when he wakes up each morning, he takes them to school and battles with his buddies at lunchtime, and they're the first thing he grabs out of his school bag when the bell rings at 2.55pm. Generally he'll be spinning them around the floor while I'm trying to cook dinner each day too.


He's also getting ready and excited for his second rugby season, which starts this weekend.


And when the day's over, the sun's gone down and the chill has set back in again, I've been really appreciating some early nights, with the odd sneaky glass of red wine and pile of books under my warm blankets!



Monday, April 8, 2013

Our World Of Eczema


When Molly was a baby and we lived in Auckland, she had terrible eczema. We were constantly in and out of the doctors and the Plunkett rooms and the naturopaths. We removed dairy from her diet, and I was obsessed with alternative sources of calcium. We had a bucket load of creams to apply all the time. We reduced the severity, but we never cured it.

Then we left New Zealand, and we were away for three and a half years. We had some great adventures during this time and lived in some very incredible (and very remote) places. One of my initial worries was how we were going to keep Molly on a restricted diet and how we were going to manage her eczema with no access to big supermarkets or specialist stores, limited doctors and no specialists.

But then a very cool thing happened. It seemed that as soon as we left Auckland, her eczema pretty much disappeared.

Three and a half years went by and we’d pretty much forgotten about those difficult early days.  We returned to New Zealand (this time to live in Wellington), and all of a sudden Molly’s eczema returned.

By now, Alfie also had eczema, so our bathroom cupboard quickly became an enormous mountain of creams and we had to adapt to a regular management programme involving, at certain periods and during certain seasons of the year (it seems to be worst in Spring and Autumn), the application of creams on two children 4 or 5 times a day, special bath products, little bodies covered with gauze and bandages, weekly doctors’ visits, antihistamines, regular antibiotics to fight infections, etc, etc.

Alot of the time Molly’s eczema is accompanied by a stuffy or runny nose and itchy eyes. Given our experiences overseas, our belief so far has always been that her eczema / allergies are caused by environmental factors that are specific to New Zealand, perhaps things like long native grasses, Pohutakawa trees and Cabbage trees. But according to the experts there are thousands of causes of eczema, so who knows?

Last weekend we also discovered that Molly is allergic to Flucloxicillin – an antibiotic that is part of the penicillin family and most commonly used to treat skin infections. Bugger!

Overall, the eczema is slowly driving us all completely INSANE!!! The amount of time and money we are spending on it is ridiculous, and the emotional consequences are worse. The kids get exhausted as they don’t sleep properly, and they get irritable and grumpy....and so do Jake and I!

Molly has been teased at school about it, and last night she cried herself to sleep, saying “I wish I didn’t get eczema”, and “I wish I was normal”. (Trigger my broken heart...)

Thank goodness her doctor has finally ordered a RAST test (a special kind of blood test that tests for allergies) to see if we can figure out what’s causing her problems. First, she’s going to be tested for allergies to dust mites, dairy, nuts, shellfish, eggs, soy and wheat. But until she’s off the antihistamines (which she relies on at the moment), she can’t have the RAST test.

So we’re playing a waiting game now...