This blog is for Olive and while this post isn't directly about Olive, I wanted to post something about some people who are very important in her life. Her older siblings, Jaxon and Meisha. My big kids have been AMAZING since we had Olive. And not just cliché amazing, REAL amazing. I am so proud of the people they are - they are so accepting and comforting. They are confident and they are encouraging. I couldn't have asked for better people for Oli to look up to. Truly.

Jaxon is my 8 year old, as most people know. He is the most sensitive and caring wee boy I have ever met. He has an intuition when it comes to peoples feeling's and he is very good at being supportive and compassionate to people without being prompted. He likes to make people feel special, and when he does, he has this beautiful coy smile that he treats you with. Out of all of my babies, he was the biggest laugher. From a very young age, he would make us laugh with his infectious belly laugh and he still does. You can't help chuckling as well when you hear him chortling away.

Jax is a quiet boy a lot of the time and people mistake him for being shy. He is actually very confident. He doesn't think much of getting in front of an audience and performing. In fact, I think he quite thrives on it. At my mother in law's 60th birthday recently, they had a microphone for people to stand up and say something. Jax insisted on standing up there, in front of a room full of adults he barely knew, and he wished his Grandma a happy birthday. That kind of stuff? That makes my heart just beam with pride.

Jax is never slow to helping me with Olive and he takes good care of her when they play together. He has a good dose of common sense for a boy of his age and will not hesitate to call me if he feels there is any type of danger. He loves laughing at Olive and getting her to do silly things and make her laugh. He doesn't care if things are girly or pink, if it keeps his sister happy, he will do it.

Meisha, on the other hand, he is not quite so happy to help! lol. They are just 20 months apart in age so there is more sibling rivalry there. They are thick as thieves sometimes, and other times are at each other's throats.

She comes across as a shy quiet girl as well, and is actually a lot more shy than Jaxon. She has a wicked sense of humour and can be very clever in some of the pranks she has played on me (like locking me outside in my knickers and bra one morning while she stood there laughing her little head off!)!

My Meisha is a very competent child, she is excelling in her gymnastics class and she enjoys doing things that make her feel strong - climbing, running, lifting things etc. She obviously gets that from Eddie, not me!

Meisha also loves maths. A maths problem excites her and she loves being challenged into figuring out new ones. Meisha struggles a bit more with her reading, where Jax excels with his so often he will sit with her while I am busy doing dinner (or some other necessary but boring task) and help her with her reading. That is a delightful sight to a mother's eyes.

Meishy-moo is a beautiful girl (yes yes, all the looks from me haha!) and is often told so. She has gorgeous dark eyelashes with naturally blonded hair, and coupled with her lovely skin tone and her charming features, she really is a beauty.

Both Jaxon and Meisha have never moaned about Olive taking up time, or about Olive being different and having any different attention or treatment from anyone. They have always been on this road with us - enjoying the good times, knowing the sad times, and always always ALWAYS being right there for Olive. In every way.

I am so proud of my children. They truly are my biggest achievement. All three of them. Not only are they all stunners (haha, biased mother!) but  I am so pleased with the people they are already, and the more they blossom every day.

Olive climbed up the chair and plonked herself on it, wrapping her blankie over her legs.
"No babe, hop into bed please". I told her.
"No", she said defiantly.
"Why not?" I asked (stupid me!).
"Coz, Mum. Just beee-coz. Ok?"

Good lord, this child has attitude! No idea of the consequences of her actions just yet, but quite determined to not do anything that doesn't suit her.

She has become almost obsessed with a lovely soft blanket that a good friend of mine gave her for her first birthday. Since she got it last year, I've always had it on her bed as it is so nice and soft, I thought it would feel lovely on her skin. Just the last few weeks, she has insisted it goes everywhere with her. She has to have her 'bankley' when she snuggles on the couch, or when she comes in our bed, or when we go in the car, and today she was dragging it around outside while she watched her Daddy mow the lawns.
She got grass clippings and dirt all over it, so I chucked it in the washing machine. She kept trying to get it out, crying "bankleeeey! bankleeeeey!" and when it was finally done, I hung it in the sun to dry. It would have only taken 15 minutes but she spent every second of it, trying to tug it off the clothes line.
So I cut it in half. Bearing in mind, it was the size of a single bed blanket, she now has 2 decent cot sized "bankleys", so she can leave one on her bed and one can go everywhere.
Ahhhh, genius!

So tonight she had her "bankley" and Taylor Teddy (a teddy she acquired from her Aunty last week and has also grown a fondness for) in my bed and her teeny toes were poking out from beneath her blankey.
"Mummy! Look! Dat toe is sneaky!"
Hahaha, I love this kid!

After her sneaky toe had been poked back in, I told her to turn over (she has also taken to removing her pyjama top so she can feel the blanket on her skin..so sweet!) and I would tickle her back. She obediently did so, and I started tickling. After a few minutes, her breathing slowed and got deeper and she was lying perfectly still so I figured she was almost asleep. Then suddenly she throws herself over, grins and says "tanks Mummy!".

I could record so many conversations with Olive. She surprises us every day. She speaks in full sentences and it is very rare that you would have to ask her to repeat herself. She is a very bright wee button, who is also very capable. She loves climbing and doing anything the big kids are doing. She can lift herself on the rings and takes herself down the slide. I love seeing how more and more confident she gets each day.

She turns 2 in 2 weeks. A whole 2 years since this little tornado came bursting into our lives. She has had a lot of attention since the article came out in the paper, and it is fantastic. We have managed to find 2 new people with CMN through the article which is just so great! We are planning a CMN get-together in Rotorua in April, for NZ families which we are super excited for. Another great step in linking us all together.
And so far, we have raised over $3000 towards our Olive's Chance fundraiser. This is incredible!! Absolutely astounding how generous everyone has been. Thank you all.

For more details or to donate, you can go to: https://www.givealittle.co.nz/cause/oliveschance

Love, love, love

This is just a short post for today, as I mainly wanted to post a link to the article we did. We are so overwhelmed right now. The support and encouragement from people is incredible. Absolutely amazing. We are over halfway to our goal of $5000 to help with the trip to Australia (we hope to save $5000 as well). Today has been such a high, with donations coming in thick and fast and messages from people sending their love and support. We have had a message from another AUCKLAND nevus Mum - hooray!! Just what we are wanting. To connect with others in the same boat as us.
I was so afraid of doing the fundraising, because of my own insecurities, but I am so glad we took that big step and threw ourselves into all of this. The positive attention coming our way is so humbling and we are so proud that there are such wonderful people not just in our lives, but in the world. All of this, for my wee angel girl, who has no idea....

Thank you, to everyone, from the bottom of our hearts for making this dream come true for our little family.

(You can read the article here: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/9820680/Family-seeks-help-for-tot).

If anyone wants to donate to Olive's Chance, you can do so at:

https://www.givealittle.co.nz/cause/oliveschance

You know those days you have with your toddler, where right from the moment they wake you up at some ridiculous hour, to the moment they fight you to sleep, everything is a battle? They tip their Weetbix on the floor and smear Marmite toast into the carpet. They tip water over your books, and eat the cat food. They figure out how to climb the fireplace, and how to hang from the bath rail. They refuse to wear clothes, and take bites out of every piece of fruit in the fruitbowl. They hop back in the bath once they're dried with pyjama's on, and they like to make phone calls without your knowledge, often to 111.
I'd like to carry on saying that these are one off days but in reality, this is my life. The Terrible Two's. Which start at one, and end at five. When your child suddenly realises that they don't need Mum for everything, that they have some choice in their life. So they choose. And they choose the most frustrating and messy choices they could ever choose.
And guess who has to pick up after them? U-huh....Mum.

And so although you may not like to admit it ("oh heeell no, my life doesn't revolve around my children"), fact is, your entire world is now dictated by this tiny being who has a meltdown if you don't let them wear their shoes on the wrong feet, but is overjoyed at running away at bathtime.

You spend every waking moment trying to supervise every task and when you think you can quickly sneak off to the bathroom, you return a minute or two later to a mess (generally in our case it is the kitty litter tipped up or milk she's tried to pour herself) that takes up MORE time to clean up, by which time they have started up in another quest to decorate the house.

So if you've been through this stage, you know exactly what I mean when I say, I need a break.
It's not that I don't love my kids. In fact, its the total opposite - I love my kids so much that I put everything into them, rarely leaving any energy for me to focus on myself. By the time bedtime rolls around each night, all I want is to mung out in front of the tele in a little bubble and ignore the world.

So I'm at that point where I just cant wait to have the night off in 2 weeks for our 1st wedding anniversary. I will jump at any opportunity to have 5 minutes quiet time. So when I realised I needed coconut cream for dinner, I thought YES! I need to go to the dairy! (How sad is that?)

So I yelled 'BYE!' to the husband and kids, jumped in the car, and put it into reverse. Then I looked up to see wee Olive standing at the {locked} door, peering out and grinning. I wound down the window and could hear her yelling 'Lullooo Mummy!! Byyyeee Mummy!!! Lulloooooo!' and blowing smoochy kisses off her chubby hand while the other smeared some crap all over the glass.

And that makes it all worth it. Every ounce of frustration and annoyance that comes with being a parent is taken back in the knowledge that this small child trusts, that even after all of those hair-tearing incidents, you love them no matter what. To the moon and back.

My babies are my world. My life DOES revolve around them. Everything I do, is for them. In my last post I mentioned our goal to go take our family to Australia for the next nevus conference. This is in January 2015, and it is extremely important to us. It is not only important for my children and ourselves to meet others who walk a similar road, but it is invaluable for the information we can acquire for Olive's health down the track. With this information, and support from international organisations, we can also take the next step in building an officially recognised charity organisation in New Zealand for CMN. If anybody would like to donate to help us achieve our goal, you can do so by visiting https://www.givealittle.co.nz/cause/oliveschance. Please do not feel obliged to do so by any means, even sharing the page will be just as much help.

Thank you everybody for your continued support, it means the world to our family.

Eminem played an amazing gig last night!

Apparently....I wouldn't know much about that because I didn't go. Haha (can you tell I am just slightly jealous?). Our family went to the hot pools instead, along with my sister and her family. The kids had an absolute blast! My older two had new snorkelling gear to try out and loved practising what they learn at their swim lessons with my sister and her fiancée's older girls. All the kids (including the two biggest kids - my husband and my brother in law) spent ages running up to the top of the hydroslides and coming zooming down on the mats, being hurled into the water at the bottom and fumbling around a sea of people to find the right way up. The bigger kids at the pools kept blocking the slides so that when the next lot of people came down the water would come gushing out, tumbling people upside down. Was hilarious to watch peoples faces as they came caning out into the sunlight.
Of course, after watching for ten minutes or so, Olive decided she wanted a go. So Eddie took her on the slide with him, and shared his mat. My sister and I watched, phones poised to record, expecting them to come out the slower slide. Next minute, Olive and her Dad come whooshing out of the faster slide, Olive being held high in the air so as not to go under the water.
'MORE!' comes her little voice.

Of course she wants more. Of course.

We were all over it by dinnertime and got out to get changed. In the changing rooms, I stripped Oli off and as I went to dry her she, being the mischievous toddler she is, ran off. There were a lot of people in the changing room, and I was well aware that my daughter was zipping around nudey rudey and she had a very very noticeable giant mark across her back that most doctors (let alone your average person at a pool) have never seen. I automatically expected some stares and whispers and as she whipped out into the corridor in front of a woman of about 50, I was anticipating a reaction of some kind from this lady whose view was the different back of my precious babe.

'And she's off!', was all she said, with a big smile at me - obviously someone who understood toddlers....a Mum to Mum smile.

I grinned, grabbed my baby and took her back to clothe her.

God bless that sweet woman, for normalising what I anticipate people making hard for my beautiful and naughty child. She made my day.

Ready or not....

As parents, we are designed to protect our young. It is the natural instinct that comes to us, generally (of course there’s the odd exception), from the moment our child is born. It is instinctual to protect them from harm and to love and nurture them. Of course, our own upbringing often comes into play with how we behave with our own children but the natural course is overall, to protect.

You are probably aware that Eddie and I never wanted to treat Olive any different to our other children, though it is actually inevitable that there will be differences anyway – as there are with each child you have, and their siblings. There are differences in how you parent your eldest and your youngest, your boy and your girl, your twins and your singleton and so on, whether we like it or not.

I’m not sure if it is the fact that Olive is my last baby, or because she has a difference, but I definitely feel super protective of her. In some ways, I am more relaxed in my parenting with her, (letting her climb things even though it gives me heart palpitations, or allowing her to have probably far too much chocolate!) but when it comes to trusting others with her care, I am not very good at letting go.

I let both my older two children cry it out in order to get them to learn to put themselves to sleep, instead of being fed or rocked to sleep. It was torture with Jaxon, and I remember crying on the phone to a friend while 8-month old Jaxon was crying in bed.

When Olive was younger, she would make herself throw up with the way she cried. If she wasn’t ready for bed, she would do this awful throat thing and make herself vomit throughout her bed. For us, letting her do this went completely against the grain of the Nurture side of parenting. So we didn’t let her do it. We let her get away with far too much – we still do! – And have learnt instead to read her signs, as opposed to us dictating when she goes to bed.

Jaxon started community kindy at 2.5 years old. Meisha was 7months old and whenever we dropped him off or picked him up, she would crawl around and play and paint as well. So when she turned two, it was her time to go off to kindy. They both thrived there and it gave them a lot of confidence with other people and in themselves.

With Olive nearing two, and being the social butterfly she is, we have been contemplating whether to enrol her. The kindy in question is not in our current area, we would have to drive across town but I know all the teachers and they know Olive from when she was born (Meisha was 4 years 8 months when Oli was born, so still at kindy for a short while).

Our issue though, is that there are not set age groups. With the 2 year olds are also 3 and 4 year olds. Which worries us because Olive is really active. She climbs, and runs and talks. Older children may mistake her for being more capable, and what if she fell and tore her nevus? We are always going to have this in the back of our minds, but we have decided right now, we are not ready. I think I will enrol her at the local kindy instead, which takes children at just over 3 years old.

So while we are not ready to let her go off into the big bad world on her own, we are ready for a bit more Nurturing. We feel it is a real responsibility as her parents to have an active role in the nevus community, as small as it is. Haley (Olive’s ‘same/same’ friend) and I are going to organise a New Zealand get together, and Eddie and I are going to try our best at getting our family to Australia for the January 2015 conference. It has been a goal of ours since Olive was born and we learnt about Nevus Support Australia and Nevus Outreach. But we always said we would not take her unless we could take the older kids as well, to avoid that ‘special treatment’.

So that is our 2014 goal. To get our family to Australia after Christmas this year.

 

 

When all of a sudden, you realise that the condition you once thought would dominate your child's life, has in fact become a back seater in all the goings-on.

The Girl is almost two! Well OK, it's still a few months away but she is now 21 months and that is a lot closer to 2 than 1. She is a bright wee 21 monther as well. Olive is already talking in sentences of up to about 4-5 words. She has great manners and thanks people appropriately for anything they may give her or do for her . She apologises if she thinks she has done something wrong ('Oh sowweee Mummy'). She has grown up etiquette when people arrive to visit ('Hi Rach, come in!'). And she surprises us with the 3 syllable words she manages to pronounce to almost-perfection (delicious, attitude).

Olive is at a mischievious but oh, so fun stage in her life and it is starting to drive me bonkers, though I can't help but laugh. She is testing the boundaries, with the odd swear word thrown in mid conversation (always in context mind you! I really must watch my language more :-\), climbing eeeeeverywhere, running away when she is naughty, amongst other things.

One thing that infuriates me, is she bites shoes. Jandals, in fact. Meisha's jandals looked like a puppy had got to them, with all the knaw marks and chunks around the front of them. Then she started on her own. More chunks and bite marks. So we got them all new jandals for Christmas - you know, brand new, lovely clean looking new jandals. Except, after today, they are all brand new, lovely clean looking jandals with great chunks of the toe part missing.

Yesterday we rescued a young kitten and have made it a home here while we look for her owners. Olive has taken great delight in welcoming this kitten, Sadie as we have named her for now, to our family (as have the big kids). Olive bounds after her like a miniature ogre, stumbling and fumbling to touch this little ball of fur. She also tries to take some responsibility by helping with feeding Sadie...by putting kitty litter in her milk, and cat biscuits on the floor.
The 'help' aside, she is lovely with Sadie and pats her with a soft fat hand whilst nodding and repeating her mantra of, 'gentle, hi cat! Nice cat. Gentle...Hi cat! You right cat?...gentle. Niiiiice cat'. She likes to prepare herself for a hold by sitting down, getting her legs all in the right position and farting around for far too long and then having a quick 2 second hold before Sadie's tail scares her again and she is off to the next thing.

Amongst all her character building and quirky days, she has had a few rough days as well. Our New Years Eve was cut short as Olive came down with a fever which at the time I didn't know the reason for. It appears it was due to a new tooth erupting and was giving her grief, poor little mite.

She has also had a few instances lately where she has scratched her back. One was on my bracelet, another on my sisters bracelet and another on something unknown. All 3 times, her nevus skin has broken and bled. It has reminded us how sensitive and fragile it is. She is such a regular toddler and lives her life so normally that it is easy to forget sometimes a little extra care is needed with some simple things. In saying that, while these scrapes have obviously hurt her and she has cried, she is tough as guts at other times! She falls over and scrapes her knees, gets up and soldiers on.
There have been so many times lately where we would expect tears and sobbing, that I actually asked Eddie if he thought she felt pain! lol.

For all her funny, and humourous things she does and says, there is still nothing better than waking in the morning to this little face saying, 'morning Mummy!' and snuggling her tiny body into mine to spoon.