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2006-02-02 - 11.36pm previous entry next entry
Paddy cat died, and other more upbeat stuff
Thank you SO much for the encouraging notes! I appreciate them so much, and as always they uplift me no end just when I need it :) Thank you.
My last puddy-tat died today :( My original "Bean" - his name was Paddy but I loved him so that my insides squelched when I cuddled him and it always made me want to give him a cutesy nickname. Bean was the one that popped out when he was a kitten when I was 17 (well, Paddy-Bean, followed by just Bean, and then Beanie-Boy, and then various oddities revolving around "Bean", the weirdest (but most heart squelching for me) being Beansome-whack! Wha??!).
Anyway. He was an old boy, 14 years old. We had two cats, brothers from the same litter who had been rescued as a family of strays in London. We adopted them from the Cat's Protection League. Percy was the other cat, and I loved him DEARLY but somehow Paddy had my soft spot. They were both so darling though. They were absolute members of the family. Percy died two Decembers ago. He was really ill before he died for quite a while and finally my parents had him put to sleep :( It was so heartbreaking.
Paddy got sick while we were there over New Year, but not reeeally sick at the time. Anyway, long story short, he had a tumour on his intestines, and today they did surgery on him to try and remove it. But they found it had spread to his kidneys already, and so they didn't revive him (as per my parents' wishes). My Mummy and Daddy took him home and buried him in their garden in France, in a bed of beautiful roses that they planted when they moved there, opposite an identical rose bed where Percy is buried.
I feel so sad. But my parents are completely broken. Mummy cried during our daily phone call and told me that she and Daddy have both been in tears all day. We SO love our cats in this family! It sounds a weird thing to say, but I feel almost relieved that I had not been able to maintain such intense squelchiness of heart with Paddy since I haven't lived at home with him for 6 years now. I remember I used to be scared of when he would die. I did not know how I would breathe again, but now I have had that distance, I can be the one saying the right things to my tearful mummy on the phone and not have so much pain as I could have had.
Anyway. It's so sad. Our cats are gone, and it has been such a long time that they were with us over all. I bet my parents' house feels so empty now :(
So.
We got the new single mattress today, and I did (stupidly) too much work instead of leaving it for Neil when he got home from work - I unpacked it, pushed it up the stairs, rearranged the bedroom furniture and laid it in place next to our kingsize mattress on the floor, and made up both mattresses with clean sheets :) It was bigger than I thought in our room and barely wedged in between the wall and the kingsize (which is also up against the opposite wall). So now we have a magnificent WALL OF BED!!! It looks fantastic to a tired mummy, hehe! Soooo inviting. I never saw such a big expanse of bed ever before. And it's ouuuurs, all ours!!! :)
Arthur was terribly excited during the whole (2 hour long!!!) procedure. He climbed straight on the new mattress while I tried to get the sheets ready to put on it, and actually started jumping up and down - which is a first for him NOT holding onto anything! He was so delighted!
Arthur fed himself quite a bit of his tea today!! He had fish fingers, spaghetti in tomato sauce, and peas. He used his toddler fork and managed really well! He was so excited when I told him well done, or that he was a clever boy :) He grinned so wide that the food almost fell out again, every time he managed to get some in with the fork! He also did pretty well spoon-feeding himself (and me!) his yoghurt.
I need to get him re-fitted for shoes. They said to come back in January as he might have grown out of his size 3s by then, but we haven't got round to it. His shoes seemed fine till maybe this past week, when they have seemed a little harder to get on than normal. So I need to get him refitted, and soon!
He has a physio appt on Monday (the 6th) for another plaster cast to be put on his left leg. The physiotherapist said she will put him in another plaster the following week, and HOPEFULLY that's all he will need (though she wonders if he might actually end up needing a third one), because she is going away on holiday after that week so he will be out of plaster for a bit even if he does need another one. Anyway. Maybe I should wait to get his shoes refitted, till after the plasters? Mind you, no, because he will still have one foot in a shoe and he could totally grow out of it over the time he is in plaster, and I can't bear the idea of taking him to a busy children's shoe store with one leg/foot in super-thick reinforced plaster! I hate it when we're out in public when he is in plaster. I get so many not-nice looks, like I have let my baby break his legs or something :( So I prefer to avoid it, or cover his leggies up as best I can in the pushchair or something.
Anyway. Need to do that. Or something.
Arthur is starting to say a couple more things - light (lah) and drink (dih). Also today when he was in his highchair getting fussy and not wanting to eat his lunch, I tried a distraction (which usually works) of asking him where various things are in the kitchen. It really showed me how much he understands now!
I asked him in quick succession without any clues by my looks or body language, where the various kitchen appliances are. He pointed clearly to each one, like a SECOND after I asked him where it was, so he is understanding the names of them clearly. I was surprised, but maybe I shouldn't be? I know that toddlers understand MUCH more than their parents usually think they do, but I still felt surprised! He pointed instantly to the right things when I said the names of the washing machine, tumble dryer, microwave, dishwasher, toaster, fridge, freezer (he pointed to the top of the F/F for "fridge" and the bottom for "freezer", which is the right way round), boiler, oven, iron and light. He said iron and oven as he pointed to them too.
He is also understanding WAY more general questions that I ask of him. Basic ones like, "Where's your other sock?" (he'll go and find it and bring it to me), "Can you find your bricks and build me a tower?" (he'll at least go to the bricks and pick one up to show me, and often start building a tower too), "That's a dirty hankie! (when he fishes one out from somewhere) Can you put it in the bin for Mummy?" (he'll wrinkle his nose and say, "Ur-thur-thur!" (urgh!) and go and drop it into the bin). Also he is always stashing his sippy cup and I can never find it! So lately I have started asking him, "Where's your drink?" and he will look for it. He usually doesn't find it though! I don't think he pays much attention to where he puts it, since his WHOLE day revolves around stashing and sorting and taking-out-of-drawers-and-cupboards! It's just one item in fifty thousand that he has put somewhere that day!
Today I could see his drink behind the toy garage on the floor, and I asked him, "Where's your drink?" He immediately started wandering round the room with his concerned "searching" expression on, hunting for his drink. I didn't help him because I thought he would see it and lift it up triumphant to lots of praise from me! But he didn't see it. Eventually he just turned round to me and raised his hands palms upwards out to his sides, shrugging his shoulders and looking a bit lost in his expression! I never saw him do that before! It was so cute :) He was clearly telling me he couldn't find it, and it was all gone. I don't even know how he learned that. Maybe he has watched us do that kind of mannerism when we can't find something, or perhaps I have signed "all gone" with him more than I thought I had.... Anyway it was super cute :) I showed him where it was of course, and he was pleased to find it. I love that communication with Arthur is just opening up like a flower at the moment.
He did a stumbly little run today, trying to get away from me (shrieking and giggling!) when he had something in his hand that he knew he shouldn't have, and I was fast approaching him to get it back! Monkey boy :) But that was the fastest I have seen him go yet, and the first time he has broken into a little canter and not fallen over as a result.
The boy does NOT stop moving at the moment. It's crazy, he just never stops moving his feet or his body! He walks with everything in his hand rather than stopping to examine it, and squirms constantly when tethered to his highchair for meals! If he is walking with a musical wind-up toy in his hand and it stops, he brings it to me to wind up again (after a quick failed attempt of his own) and during the few seconds it takes me to wind it up, he paces back and forth!!! He is just a super live-wire at the moment! He never seems to run out of energy and still doesn't conk out easily for a nap or bedtime. I have been exhausted today (after my silly over-activity!) and just couldn't keep up with him. I even had to let him play with things he had gotten hold of that he should not have been playing with, because he would KEEP on getting them out and I came over breathless with tiredness and had to lie on the sofa for a while, listening to my ceramic ovenware going clunk, crash, chink as he enthusiastically stacked it on the kitchen floor! We really should have child locks on some of the low level kitchen cupboards, but so far we have just supervised him and let him explore everything "safely". And taught him what not to play with. Which has worked REALLY well except that he knows he can use those things to push my buttons when he sees me tied to the phone, say, or exhausted on the sofa! Little monkey!
He is such a treasure! Despite being such a mischief-maker! ;)
Okay. I am going to bed. I sooooooooo need to update my pregnancy diary but I didn't feel like it tonight. I just wanted to come here, say my baby cat is gone, and then write cheerful stuff about Arthur to get in a nice frame of mind for going to bed. And it has worked, so before it wears off I think I will hit the hay! I'll update again soon though.
Oh! I almost forgot! We sold the car!!!! For more than we had expected! Within four days of it being advertised!! Thank you God! That was a big answer to prayer - I even asked the ladies at fellowship group to specifically pray that we would sell it quickly. The buyer is a really sweet lady and she is coming back with her husband on Saturday with a banker's cheque (she already gave us a deposit), and then she'll drive the car away. We still have our family car (Citroen C5) but poor Neil no longer has a car to drive to work. He is going to buy a bike on eBay. I hope his knees hold out. He has bad knees. It's that or the train, but that's not cheap. Or Arthur and I drive him to work and pick him up, but we agreed that will suck so he'll try the other options first. He has been wanting to get a bike and cycle to work for yeeears, so I hope it works out well.
Anyway, yay, that will clear our overdraft and start to pay off our credit cards. We will still need that loan from my parents to pay the rest off though. But I'm so relieved to get the ball finally rolling. We have been paying unfathomable amounts in overdraft fees lately, as we have been over the limit for months with no money to cover it. So yay :)
And now I am definitely going to bed.
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