Jonahsaurus.

He is big like little baby dinosaur!! Not official but I did a pretty decent weigh and measure on him yesterday and it seems he's well and truly on the charts! He's about 15th centile for height and 20th% for weight. That's a giant (pardon the pun) leap for a tot who until recently didn't even scrape into the 3rd percentile for height and was barely touching the 10th for weight.

He's growing!!

Developmentally he's quite far behind. In fact if I check him against the DSM IV he'd get a diagnosis of ASD but I just don't think that's our issue. His gross motor skills seem fine but he staggers a lot, like he has no balance and he can't run yet but I'm not sure at what age that usually comes. But he can climb and conquer any piece of furniture in the house! He has hyperacusis (Over sensitive hearing) which Luke also suffers from. It's a pain, there are noises everywhere and they all make him scream in fear.

Language, both receptive and expressive are far behind. He doesn't talk, at all, and he doesn't seem to understand instructions or much of what we are saying to him. He can't do any "Show me your foot/eyes/nose," etc and can't follow simple instructions like, "Go and get your shoes," or, "Where is the book?" But he does love it when I sing to him or when Darling Husband plays guitar. It seems music is his thing.

His fine motor skills are also very far behind. He still hasn't developed a pincer grip, can't self feed, has trouble drinking even from a sippy cup and refuses to hold a pencil or any kind of writing implement.

We have a stack of tests and specialist appointments coming up in the next three weeks. I have lost all hope that they'll ever find what's wrong with him but we will definitely be needing early intervention so I will go along and get the appropriate paper work filled out.

Stay tuned!!


(Woops, sorry bout the sideways pic!)

Fail to plan...plan to fail.

Yesterday was an epic fail. I failed to notice that we'd run out of eggs. Eggs are a staple part of my breakfast. Every morning I start the day with an egg and vegetable omelete. The eggs are a great source of protein and the vegetables give me the carbs I need for energy.

Yesterday morning, no eggs. So what did I do?? I thought, "Oh it's ok, I'll just have toast, I haven't had any processed carbs in a while so it will be ok. So I had toast and vegemite for breakfast. Fail!

Within two hours I was starving. We'd gone to Costco ( to stock up on eggs!) and whilst there we bought a tray of croissants. Famished, I just ate one, but it wasn't enough and then I was literally craving another one. So I ate another one and it was good! The high energy carbs from the bread had hit my blood steam like a sugar fountain and the cravings came back in full swing.

Seriously, I felt out of control. Two hours later I was again famished. I ate two more. The croissants had sugar as one of their ingredients so I was feeding the addiction. I knew it but I didn't want to stop it. It was kind of like all those times when I gave up smoking, a few weeks after giving up I'd have..just one...just one and then I won't have any more! Of course until that last time I gave up, I always did have more.

It was the same with the croissants. By days end I'd eaten four of them! They tasted bloody nice too! LOL. Sure they weren't as sugar laden as a cake but they didn't need to be. They had sugar in them and that's all that mattered. That's why I didn't feel full after eating them and that's why I still wanted more food even though I had already eaten.

This morning I woke feeling lile I had a hangover. I'm not kidding. I had the worst headache, my face was all red and puffy, I was lethargic and felt really unwell. Luckily I had eggs in the house again so I quickly whipped up some eggs, spinach and mushrooms before the temptation to eat bread came over me again.

Bread isn't the devil and I'm not suggesting it is, but for me it's a precursor to a carb overload so it's best I just don't eat it. It's kind of like an ex smoker sitting in a room full of smokers, trying not to want one. Bread is my smoking buddy.

Today has been ok. I'm tired but that can be blamed on a myriad for things. Good lesson learned though. I'm just not strong enough yet to allow any high energy carbs into my system.

I did have the most awesome blueberry smoothy for lunch though!!

Bandwagon. I haz one.

Ever since giving up sugar I've noticed a curiosity amongst friends and aquaintences. Since year dot we've all been 'giving up fat and taking up exercise', so giving up sugar seems to be something new. Well it is new.

Everyone at the gym knows I'm doing it as I have had a lot of support from two of the trainers there who have been fructophobes for some time now. Plastering it all over my facebook page has also sent the message loud and clear that this is my latest bandwagon. And it appears I am collecting a few passengers along the way.

The curiosity of people who want to know more about giving up sugar has really surprised me. I thought I'd have to be explaining myself all the way, defending my actions so to speak but it's been quite the oposite. People are often asking me how I'm going, why am I doing it, what exactly am I changing to give up sugar, is it hard, do I think they could do it too, etc. The questions are all the same but the most striking thing has been the amount of people who say to me, "But I don't eat a lot of sugar."

Yes you do. You just don't know it.

When I give some examples of where the hidden sugar may be in their diet they stand mouth agape and suddenly want a seat on the bandwagon. Of course I happy help them aboard and further ear bash them until the probably wish I hadn't lol.

Sugar is everywhere and it doesn't always taste sweet. It's hidden in so many foods, especially low fat foods, they're laced with it to make them more palatable. You often have to be specifically looking for sugar to find it.

One of sugars most evil traits is that it inhibits your appetite suppressing hormone Leptin, so your brain doesn't even realise it's eaten anything. And, it's addictive which is why so many people find it so hard to stop at one Tim Tam and why so many always feel hungry when they've eaten an adequate amount of calories.

Your brain simply doesn't register that it's eaten anything when you eat a high sugar meal. And remember, it doesn't have to be a sweet tasting meal to be a sugar laden meal.

So in short, you eat something high in sugar, your brain doesn't recognise you've eaten, you're still feeling hungry, you eat more, you end up eating twice as much as you need in order to feel satiated, you gain weight.

So what do you do next? You go on a low fat diet of course! You start eating low fat this and low fat that, all of it laced with sugar...and you wonder why you can't lose any weight.

At The End

I can finally say I am at the end of the sugar withdrawal stage. I haven't had any cravings for days now and I am no longer having any symptoms of withdrawal. All I am doing now is feeling better and better each day. I'm also kicking myself as to why I didn't do this before. Well at least I won't be lamenting when I'm 51 that I didn't start it when I was 41 lol.

My mood is now one of the biggest changes I can notice. I have so much more patience, I'm awake, and I mean really wide awake. I can concentrate so much better, the head fog has gone. I seem to be making more clearer and rational decisions. Not that I was running around with wild abandon putting everyone in jeopardy with crazy decisions but I no longer struggle with decision making. Sometimes even deciding what to wear or what to have for dinner was a big deal, now I can just make the decision straight away and it's done.

I seem to want to do things now whereas before it was often a struggle to do anything. I thought I was just in a rut but it's not. I realised that I'm now looking for challenges, things to get my brain working. It's like my brain has finally woken up fully after years of being half asleep.

I am picking up a 5kg bag of glucose tomorrow and will start cooking some of the fantastic fructose free recipes I've found. The chocolate gelati looks fantastic! I also want to try a black forest cake!

Another very noticible difference (and there is no way this could just be a coincidence), since being taken off the high fructose yoghurts, Jonah is now sleeping a minimum of 90 minutes during the day! He sleeps for between 90 minutes and 2 hours. This is a HUGE chance for him. This is the baby who never slept for more than 20 minutes, and to get an hour out of him was an absolute miracle. It happened but it was very rare.

My skin is looking so much better. It's getting some brightness back to it and the browning from the insulin resistance is fading even more. All in all, the changes are very apparent and they are very very good!

I am so so glad I did this.

You should see my house right now...

Because it's feral!

Gastro came to play at our house this weekend and with so many people living here, you can imagine the carnage. Darling Husband and I took turns nursing children, vomiting and cleaning up all maner of bodily fluids. sometimes it was a mystery as to what belonged to who. The one good thing though, Darling Husband was supposed to be in New Zealand this morning but because of some uncertainty with with JDude's tests, he didn't go, thus, he didn't leave me all alone with three spewing children hooray!

Today is Sunday and we're all feeling better. Again, hooray.

Yesterday was Seb's birthday (Quick recap for those of you only recently playing from home, Seb is from Ethiopa and has been living with us for almost 3 years now), I made her a chocolate cake, covered it in pink icing and Smarties and as is usual, she blushed. We also bought her some gifts which she loved. Honestly, I swear she is the hardest person to buy for so I was glad that she really loved her presents :)

In Ethiopia they don't celebrate birthdays like we do. It's acknowleged but you don't get presents and birthday cake. At best you might get your favorite bread baked for you and you might get some clothes if your parents have money but that's about it. So, when it's Seb's birthday and we celebrate it, she doesn't really know what to do, say, or where to look LOL. Each and every time I can't help but laugh, I've never seen a dark skinned person blush before I met Seb lol.

And yes I did say that I made her a chocolate cake, and no I didn't eat any of it. I had run out of glucose powder so had to use caster sugar. That meant I just couldn't eat any of it so I simply didn't. And to be honest, it really wasn't that hard. Half of the cake is still sitting in the fridge. It will probably get thrown out before it gets finished. That never used to happen in this house!

It's day 22 of no sugar and I can honestly say I'm now feeling no withdrawal symptoms at all. I don't crave it any more, I'm not having my afternoon slumps and I no longer have that foggy, headachy feeling. It's over, done and dusted.

Some people have asked me if I intend to stay off sugar for life or if I will soon begin to have 'just little bits', for a 'treat'. The answer is yes and no. Yes I will be staying off it for life and no I will not be having any of it for a treat.

Sugar to me is like smoking. I was addicted to nicotine and sugar. Both were ruining my health and I had to give them both up. To have a little bit of sugar for a treat now is exactly the same to me as having a 'puff of a cigarette' for a treat. Seriously, who would do that?

I do acknowlege though that it took me many times to fully give up smoking. Twice I gave up for two years, only to fall off the wagon again. Many times I gave up for 4-6 months, again to start up. Actually in the last ten years that I smoked I was off them more than I was on them. It may well be the same with sugar. I may fall off this bandwagon but I promise myself that I will do all I can not to fall off and to clamber aboard quick smart should I find those wagon wheels about to barrel over me!

There are two oposites about sugar v's nicotine though. With nocotine you're a social outcast if you partake yet with sugar you're a sociall outcast if you don't! It's hard celebrating birthdays, when you lovingly make someone a cake, present it to them and then decline a slice. It's hard going to people's houses for dinner, you have to pre arrange no dessert so the host doesn't go to too much trouble all for nothing. Restaurants are hard, the sauces almost always have sugar in them. Many places will cater for allergies, for gluten intolerance but for the sugar addicted diner? No dice. Yes, I could order off the diabetic menu, if there was one but that's as rare as my kids having a clean room for more than a nonosecond.

On Feb 2nd it will have been a calendar month since I gave up sugar. On that day I will weigh myself and see if there has been any weight loss. I don't expect big numbers, I ate an orchard full of fruit every day plus anything that wasn't nailed down during the wost of the withdrawals, and I chugged down a lot of glucose so
the scales might not go my way.

It doesn't matter. I know that eventually, one day they will. All that matters for now is that I have achieved another goal that I set out to do. I have given up sugar and I am over the withdrawals.

I hearby declare.....

That Skipper is awesome. Yes indeedly, totally awesome, just as awsome as her awesomeness manly man, Daz.

Why do you ask are they so totally awesome?!?! They found all of my old blog posts and now I have them back!!

These folks ^^^ choc full of awesomesauce, the pair of them <3 <3 <3

Can't thank you both enough. MWAH!!

xxxxx

Gah!! Can somebody help me? Please?!?!?

Look What I Found!!!

It's the headlines of all 250+ of my old blog posts but I can't get to them!!

I've emailed blogger.com and Google till I'm blue in the fingers but no one is responding to me. Does anyone know how I can get my old blog unlocked?? It will take me years to find all of the cached entries because I can't find them in one hit (unless someone know's how I can?

Is there anything I can do to get it back??

:'(

There was an old woman..

Who stood behind me in Big W and proceded to tell me her life story. She was 87, it was a long story lol. She saw me wrangling my three youngest as we waited in a line that dwarfed the Great Wall of China. She told me that she had four sons, I told her I had five, she told me I must be very strong because God only gave sons to very strong women, so to get five of them meant that I was in the running to rip Cratos' title right out from under him. I told her that sometimes I thought God had a really sick sense of humour.

Then I told her what I really thought of having five boys. She started glancing at security and backing away slowly. (<--That was actually a Scrubs moment. It didn't really happen)

She was a lovely old Dear. She told me she had buried her son last year, he was 67 when he died. I thought of how odd it would be to die at age 67 and have your Mother attend your funeral. Not that you'd know, you'd be dead of course, but still, it would be strange. Then she told me that she raised her great grand daughter who was 20 now and had pretty much run off to join the circus. She said she had to raise her great grand daughter from birth because the childs Mother was '"Nothing but a crack whore bitch." LOL I amost choked. She did say that in a whisper that only her and I could hear but she still shocked me with her language!

Next she showed me what she was purchasing. Two nice new pairs of undies. Big ones! "But Oh they're really confortable!" she said LOL. She had one black pair and one white pair. I was about to blurt out, "Oh yeah, gotta love the big Granny undies!" but then I remembered who I was talking to and just gave her a smile and a nod. She held them up and then shoved them in my face so I could get a REALLY good look at them. I wasn't sure what she wanted, maybe a score out of ten? But I just admired her new knickers as much as one can without bursting into laughter and handed them back to her.

Then she held my hand and started patting it which she continued to do the whole time I was talking to her LOL. She told me that the shirt she was wearing came from an OP shop, and that there really was nothing wrong with OP shopping you know, "You can get so many bargains there! Look at my pants, they're from the OP shop too. You'd never be able to tell unless I told you first." I told her I completely agreed and that I thought she looked lovely.

After about 73 days we finally reached the end of the line. By this stage my boys had grown fur and a long tail and were wildly climbing anything stupid enough to remain still so I said goodbye and made a hasty retreat to the check out. I saw her as she left the store. She was with a very elderly gentleman, her Husband I assume, unless she was having an affair. They were standing in front of each other, smiling... both admiring the new nickers that she was holding up.

I only hope I'm as spritely and talkative when I'm 87 as she was, and that my day can still be brightened just by purchasing two new pairs of extra large grundies. One black, one white.

Fruit Free Friday!!

Yes I know today is only Thursday but I wanted to mention that tomorrow will be my first fruit free day since giving up fructose Woohoo!! I had been relying heavily on fruit to get me through the fructose withdrawals but in the past two to three days I've happily not needed any fruit even though I have eaten some. Yesterday I ate it because I had left over fruit salad from the day before and today I ate it because I had a mango in the fridge that either needed to be eaten today or thrown out tomorrow. And we all know that chucking out a mango is sacrilege!!

Today I have not had any glucose and I'm totally fine, no withdrawal symptoms at all and I feel great. I did have a horrid nights sleep last night so I'm suprised I feel as good as I do today.

I also wanted to note another change. Everything is salty! Not only are things tasting much sweeter now, they are also tasting salty. I mean salty foods of couse, my apples aren't salty lol. Savoury foods are much saltier tasting than before and I have found that for the past few nights I haven't added any extra salt to my meals. I eat a vegetable omelete pretty much every morning for breakfast and I always add some crushed green olives to give it a salty flavor. For the past few days it's been too much, almost getting too salty, and I've noticed it in other foods too.

My need for tea drinking has all but stopped. I love a hot drink with my breakfast but apart from that I don't seem to be looking for it any more.

ok, Jonah has just wandered out of the toilet with wet hands...ewww! Signing off now.

Day 18. The best day yet.

Sorry to my regular blog readers who are not interested in this latest bandwagon I have clambered aboard lol. But you should all know by now how obsessed I get when I am on to a good thing!!

Today has by far been my best since giving up sugar. As I mentioned before, to get though the withdrawals I ate a lot of fruit and chugged down more glucose than oxygen at times but, you do what you have to to get through the worst of it. I actually noticed more improvement yesterday which has continued on to today.

Today I'm finally awake. The 20+ years of head fog I have been carrying around seems to have lifed and I feel like I have more energy than ever in my life. That's saying something considering I have three small boisterous and very messy children to run around after but I really do feel alive.

And I can taste again! This has been one of the biggest things I've noticed since I went sugar free, everything tastes so much sweeter. As I mentioned before, I have been having glugose powder in places where I'd normally have sugar but last night I just felt like I didn't really need that any more. So, today I tried tea with no glucose in it, and I kid you not I could swear it was still in there. I can taste the sweetness in the dash of milk I put in it and that's enough to satisfy the taste buds.

For those who know me, you'd understand what huge deal this is. Two sugars, every single time, tea or coffee it HAD to have two sugars in it or it just wasn't worth drinking. I tried cutting down to one and a half but it just didn't work. It tasted wrong unless it was spiked with the two sugars. If there was no sugar around I simply didn't drink it. To be able to have tea now with no sugar really is just phenomenal for me.

This morning I again tasted Jonah's Weet bix and mashed banana, just to see, and again it tasted very sweet, even sweeter than when I tasted it the other day. Those of you out there feeling sorry for your tots who are munching on bland farex or weetbix, cry no more! To them the stuff is as sweet as if it had been spiked with buckets of sugar.

Again the satiety feeling I get after eating kicks in so much quicker than before. I just ate a tuna salad and drank a glass of water and I'm sitting down because I'm literally too stuffed to move. The only times I felt like that was when I was at an all you can eat buffet where I'd eat the equivalent of two main meals and three desserts before I'd feel 'stuffed'.

I also made a concious effort today not to eat too much fruit. I am happy to have 2-3 pieces a day, preferably only two but I had been eating up to 8 pieces a day. I'd prefer to get most of my caloric intake from vegetables and protien rather than so much fruit.

I'm so interested in food these days. Not just food in front of me, food at the super market etc, I mean food as a fuel and how its nutrients work for and against us. I'd love to look into it more (study it) but there is so much mis information out there so I wouldn't know whether what I was being taught was credible or utter crap. These days I'm relying on sources who have the experience to back up their claims, not just from some skinny cow who wrote a book.

It just makes so much sense.

Sweet Surrender.

So, this no sugar gig. I thought I would write a bit about how it's all going but be warned, I am posting on about 2 hours sleep in the past 48 hours so forgive me if I start speaking in tongues. I should add for those who haven't seen the link I posted, it's fructose I'm giving up here. Fructose is one half of table sugar, the evil half and it's added to almost everything we eat. It can only be digested by the liver and is about as poison to you as alcohol is. So, when I say I'm giving up sugar, I actually mean fructose.

First of all I want to talk a bit about the symptoms of sugar withdrawal that I experienced. Even on the first morning, when I didn't have my usual hot beverage with its 2 heaped sugars I could feel the withdrawal setting in. I was dizzy, light headed and felt like you do when you've inhaled too much oxygen, kind of like when you've blown up a dozen balloons.

Day 2-4 were ok and I just had to remember that I wasn't eating sugar any more. I had to make a birthday cake for my 4yo (see totally awesome spidercake from previous entry :D) and I lost count of how many times I instinctively went to taste the batter and the icing mix. Being off sugar means just that, you're off it, no taste testing, nothing at all! So, I pretty much went through hell on these days. My symptoms were;

Extreme lethargy
Brain fog
Tiredness
Irritability
Headache
Apathy
Mild depression
Mild anxiety
Confusion

Now, I didn't give up all sugar, only fructose so when the cravings hit hard I had glucose, mostly in tea. Glucose is a sugar that can be easily digested. My enemey here was fructose which is half of table sugar, glucose being the other half. Problem is, almost everything is sweetened with table sugar and/or fructose. It really does pay to watch that link I provided in my last post to get a better understanding of what I'm banging on about here lol.

When the cravings were at their very worst I ate fruit, lots and lots of fruit, particularly nectarines and peaches (If you're going to give up sugar do it now while these babies are still in season!). My worst time was in the afternoon, which is when the symptoms seemed to hit ten fold so this is when I consumed most of the fruit. I also drank tea with glucose instead of table sugar. Now, glucose is not as sweet tasting as table sugar so you do need quite a bit of it but it's harmless and much easier to cut down on once the cravings are gone.

Day four to about day ten I can only describe as pure hell. I actually don't remember a lot of it thank God but I presume that's because my brain was so shitty at me for giving up its beloved sugar that it partially shut down. During the worst of it I was eating 6-8 pieces of fruit a day and drinking anywhere up to 6 cups of tea. It was the only thing that got me through the cravings. It just goes to show how addictive sugar is. Problem is, we never know we're addicted because it's in so many things that we're eating it every day and are unaware we're doing it. It's not until we give it up that we begin to feel the effects of sugar withdrawal.

Day 11 came around and I realised the fog had lifted. I was no longer craving the sweet stuff and my afternoon slump never happened. I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. Day 12, again I crashed and it felt just as bad as before. I knew though that like any other addiction my brain was just screaming out for a fix but that it would soon give up once it realised no fix was coming. Day 13 and 14, again, great days and on day 15 I realised I hadn't eaten a piece of fruit all day. I was now over the worst of it. And thank GOD for that!

I remember one day I was craving chocolate, really really badly. I wasn't about to eat any, I didn't actually have any to eat, but I really wanted some. So, I improvised and made choc milk instead. I simply got a cup of milk, added about a heaped teaspoon of cocoa to it and a level tablespoon of glucose, stuck it all in one of my protein shakers and let rip. It tasted lovely! Just like choc milk only no fructose.

I've been eating a lot of whole foods, unprocessed things like fruit and vegetable. I eat a lot of eggs now as well as fish, chicken, beef and nuts.I still have that problem of needing to nibble on something now and then, whereas before I'd reach for something like a biscuit, these days I eat nuts and dried chick peas. They have a lovely crunch to them! I also eat chopped carrot and celery with some chopped cheese. For a sweet treat get some greek yoghurt (full fat) with no sugar and add some fresh or frozen berries and a teaspoon of glucose powder and mix it together. very yum and much better for you than store bought sugar laden yoghurt with pretend fruit.

If you don't think you are addicted to sugar and that it's not playing a big role in your diet, try quitting it for a week and see how you go. You will need to check lables very carefully, and you're not allowed to substitute for artificial sweetners, they are an evil all unto their own! I pretty much stick to unprocessed foods all the way but I do eat tinned corn and sometimes tinned tomato in things like chilli con carne.

So, in a nutshell that's my journey so far on giving up sugar. There's so much more I'd like to bang on about but there's no need because I'm sure you've all checked out that link by now.....;)

Haven't you???

Nothing Sweet About Me.

Hmmm...that reminds me of a song!

On January 2nd 2010 I made the momentous decision to give up sugar. Yes, that's right Give.up.sugar! I mean all sugar too, well, wherever possible.

For years I've had issues with sugar. About 15 years ago I started getting terrible hypoglycaemic attacks where I would feel dizzy, shakey, confused, rapid heart rate, sweat, and I would need an instant carb hit to get me back to 'normal'. My endocrinologist told me that it was my pancreas chugging to a halt, a bit like a car engine that chugs and putters along before finally going kaput!

My last two pregnancies resulted in me having gestational diabetes which never did come under control and I was injecting insulin 4 times a day. Between pregnancies I was also diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Hardly surprising given the history.

As most know, about 15 months ago I joined a gym so began to get some very regular and very intense exercise. Since then I have literally reversed the effects of the diabetes and can no longer really call myself a diabetic. My 3 monthly HbA1c blood tests have all been around the 5.4 mark for the past 12 months since I started exercising. Exercise does good things!

But, I stil felt something wasn't quite right and I knew there was a lot more to learn with regard to what I was eating. I went on a bit of a quest to see what I could learn and more and more, the damaging effects of sugar kept popping up in the results of my google search.

Then one day, I saw this....

(couldn't embed clip. See link below)

Please, I urge you to watch it. It does go for an hour and a half but I guarantee you it will captivate you as an audience. For me it was life changing, but then again, I was looking to change something, you might not be!

I will be back to post my progress. I did mean to post as I went along but with a house full of visitors and then a broken computer, that just didn't happen! I'm on day 16 now and I remember the worst of it (sorry but sugar withdrawal is a bitch) so will blog about how I'm doing and the crafty ways I have managed to get sugar hits when I most desperately needed them!!

Watch this...

Sugar:The Bitter Truth


.

The Jones Boy

...^^^ that's what my Mother calls him lol. When she came to visit she would pick Jonah up, swing him around and sing a song with the lyrics "Have you heard about the Jones boy?"...so it kinda stuck lol. I have no idea what the name of the song was (Probably 'The Jones Boy'!) but now poor Jonah has had another nickname added to his many monikers.

So far he's called (and please don't ask why..I don't know!)

Jdude
Jman
Joe
Joe Buster
Jones
Jonesy
Jones Boy
Punk
Punky
Punk-a-lunk
Jmiester
J-fizz
J-fizzle (<---they are from big brother Reecey)

and I'm sure there are many others!

Anyhoo, once again he's got me all worried and in a tiz. He's now 18 moths old (yes, you can pick yourself up off the floor now, I found it hard to believe too lol) but he's very very far behind in his milestones. I mean, really really far behind. He's actually ticking almost all of the 'Signs you should be worried' boxes :(

Yes I know he will catch up, all in his own good time and honestly I'm not panicking or crying into my weetbix, I'm just sad for him. Life has been a struggle for him since long before he took his first breath and it seems it's not letting up any time soon.

We have more blood tests and paed/gastro appointments coming up in the next month so hopefully we can start some early intervention sooner rather than later.

I knew all that behavioral therapy training would come in handy again!!

Christmas pics.

As you can see, this years theme was red and white. It was a smaller table this year as some of our guests from last year were spending Christmas with others. Once again, it was a magical day. I can't wait for Jonah to be old enough to understand what it's all about. Luke and Sam were just about to explode by Christmas eve they were SO exctited lol.

This years turkey was done with an almond and tarragon stuffing. It was the biggest bird I had ever cooked as we left our run a little late to buy it and that's all that was left. 5.8kg, it didn't fit in my convection oven so I had to cook him in the standard oven with its uneven temperature!

It turned out lovely though and it all got eaten so I was happy!

This Christmas we also had my eldest son and his girlfriend visiting so once again, all five of my boys were together. This was only the second time this has happened and it was their first Christmas together. I was a very happy Mama <3

For those of you who don't have me on FB. Here are the pics of Christmas 2009.

Sam's 4th birthday.

Some pics of Sam's 4th birthday. Can you believe he's 4??!!!

Moving House Again!

Blogger sucks. Seriously, I can't do anything! can't paste, can't follow anyone can't add widgets, nothing! And Blogger still won't unlock my other blog :(

So I'm moving to wordpress.

I'm still figuring out how to use it but hopefully I will be able to post pics and links over there.

Come find me here...

http://fiveby40.wordpress.com

See you there!! xxx

Ok, so...I suck!

Yes once again I admit, I suck at blogging. I guess my heart just isn't in it since they tore down fiveby40. But, alas I am no quitter so I am aiming to resume as soon and as regularly as possible.

It still sucks bigtime that I can't paste anything in here. Does anyone know why? Nothing pastes at all so I can't put pics in here.

Anyhoo, quick rundown of life so far in 2010.

Christmas: Was awesome. Jdude was sick, poor little bear but Firstborn and his darling gf were here to share it with us so that made it a great day. Everything went off without a hitch. If you want to see pics send me a request on facebook. Just let me know your name so I can add you.

New year: Again, prefect! We had two lovely sets of friends over and partied on until after midnight as much as one my age can! Actually I think I stayed up until about 1.30am so that was good.

2010: The year so far. We've had my IL's visiting us for the past week. They came to celebrate Sam's 4th birthday as they had never had a chance to see him for his birthday before now. Sam had a great party and if I could I'd post a pic of his awesome spider cake, made by moi! Yes, blowing own trumpet once again but when no one else will, what can you do?!?!

My newest venture this year is going sugar free...Yep, cutting out all sugar and that means in everything processed as well. Did you know peanut butter has about as much sugar added to it as coke? True. Frightening but true.

Sugar withdrawal is nasty. I've been off it for 12 days now and I intended to blog about it every day but this thing called life got in the way and well, you know how it goes.

Ok, off to try and see if I can fix this pasting problem. In the mean time I think I will just add a bunch of pics from the album via "Add image" and let you all sort through them.

Back soon! I promise ;)