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2007-04-17 - 12.45am previous entry next entry
Arthur's feet and photos... Warning! Ice-cream mentioned!
Ohhhhhhhhhhh my goodness, I have just been thrown into a state of complete gahgghhhhhaaaahhhmmmmmmm due to having randomly come across the UK Ben & Jerry's website. I haven't had Ben & Jerry's ice-cream for aaages, but just looking at the pictures has made me go all chemically unbalanced, haha! Seriously. My mouth has been watering like crazy for a straight 20 minutes now (and I'm not even looking at the pictures any more!), and I wanted some of this -
- soooo bad that I actually felt the same throat n chest squeezy thing that I get when I am going to CRY! Half Baked = cookie dough ice cream swirled with chocolate fudge brownie ice cream. Oh. My. Bob. There be the watery mouth again. *sigh*
My first favourite of theirs (waaay back in the early (mid?) 90s, was this one:
Mmmmm, cookie doooough... Soooo want some right now... But Half Baked is my current favourite due to being both cookie dough AND a ton of chocolate, all at once! :) Anyway, then my dad went to buy some for a treat one evening and only found this one:
New York Super Fudge Chunk. Why oh why on earth have they discontinued that one?! Thank goodness I can still find it occasionally, if I'm lucky. I just love the HUGE slabs of white and dark chocolate in amongst it all. Lovely ice-cream!
If that wasn't bad enough, I then saw TWO flavours that I have never tried - well, more than two, but two that I haven't tried but REALLY want to try. Here's one of them:
It looks divine - strawberry cheesecake ice-cream (what a unique flavour!) with real strawberries and cookie swirls - cookie swirls, people! I want to lick my monitor. Thank goodness I'm not pregnant right now. Then I WOULD be crying, and also out on a crazy night errand to track some down at an all-night supermarket.
Okay, but perhaps even more tantalising is this one:
It is sweet cream ice-cream with lots of chunky bits in it - I can't resist chunks of things in ice-cream! Actual chocolate cookies, oh yes. And chocolate dinosaurs?! And a swirl of chocolate fudge. Gaaaghhghghgh... Our Cornish vanilla ice-cream in the freezer suddenly seems SO LAME in comparison! I need chocolate! And CHUNKS!
And I'm not even hormonal - well, I feel like I am now, but I'm really not! I have to get me some Ben & Jerry's next time I go food shopping. Which is a whole four days away, yarrgh!
I can't believe I'm here AFTER MIDNIGHT, waffling away about ice-cream when I should be sleeping!
Oh but I will just quickly update about general stuff.
Had another weird weekend like the previous one. Came over exhausted, weak, dizzy, etc, and I had the WORST headache on Sunday. I pretty much had to lie down most of the time and was not up to doing anything with the boys, again. Saturday night I was so wiped out and my head hurt so much (painkillers didn't touch it like the last time) that I put Matthew to bed at 7.45pm, nursed Arthur to sleep at 8pm and literally was in bed for the night at 8.15pm! Which is NOT me, as you know! The most annoying part was that even though I was lying there palpitating and feeling too exhausted to breathe, I was STILL lying there at midnight, having not been able to get to sleep yet. And feeling no better for all those hours of lying down. I did get to sleep before 1am I think. Then I stayed in bed all the next morning while Neil took the boys to church (he did my creche duty again, the lovely thing) to try and sleep it off, but couldn't go to sleep again. It's so weird, because I NEVER have sleep trouble these days, when I actually get the chance to lie down and close my eyes! I used to, but that was yeeears ago, before I had children (and became this permanently knackered, hehe!).
By the end of Sunday I was starting to feel a bit better. I was okay during the week last time too. It's so annoying how it hits at the weekend, because then I can't enjoy having Neil home, or do anything to help him out with the boys (except breastfeed), so that's a lot for him to take on. And I can't get any time for myself either, like a time-out from the week's "mummyness". Anyway. Monday morning I decided to start drinking a ton of water, because I am pretty bad at that and I breastfeed two kids, neither of whom are tiny babies any longer, but both of whom still take a LOT of milk from me each day. And it's getting warm and muggy. And I am just bad at fluids anyway. So yesterday I drank 2.5 litres of water throughout the day - go me! :) I'm doing well if I drink a litre normally, including milk and other drinks. But I had milk and juice on top of the 2.5 litres yesterday. Today I have had 2 litres. I just want to make sure I have a minimum of 2 litres of WATER, with other drinks as a surplus. I have a tick chart on the fridge door. I think that's a good way to keep me motivated (something I am not usually much good at!), so I hope I will be able to keep this up.
I also decided to start taking prenatal vitamins again. It's 3 months till we're hoping to make a baby again, so it's time to start them - what?! How is that possible?! It's exciting :) And they'll do me some good in the meantime too.
Anyway. I feel good at the moment. I just hope I won't have another crappy weekend! Neil had to do the food shopping the last two weekends running, and that has been my job since I started the family meals (over 2 months now!). Poor Neil!
He is hearing back from various job applications - all "Thanks, but no" for now, although he is still applying for new ones all the time. I'll try to keep updating about that, as eventually it will result in a HUGE life change for us, and probably sometime soon!
Arthur had a follow-up appt with the physio at the hospital about his feet, yesterday. He last went in July, when Matthew was 3 weeks old, and she wanted to wait to see him again till he was jumping and stuff, when he was nearer 2 and a half. For those who haven't been reading me since way back when Arthur was a baby, he has inherited a (much-hated-by-me!) gene from Neil that means he has "curly feet". Neil's mum has the same - for her, it was called clubfoot, but it's not actually REAL clubfoot. Neil has it, and 2 of his 3 siblings have it too. The three of them had surgery on their toes (YOW!) to try to correct it in their teens. Arthur's physio recoiled when we told her that, and described it as practically barbaric and terribly old-fashioned, and said it would do more harm than good, etc. Neil doesn't have curly feet - he never did, it's just that they are terribly stiff and the tendons seem to just get short and so his feet have no flexibility at all. He has high arches and he can't squat or put his heel down when he runs. He has been getting bad knee pain (esp in the winter) since his early 20s, but he is currently having physio too and his X-rays are normal, so he doesn't have arthritis. It's just his darn feet. Arthur's physio says the surgery would have stiffened his feet FURTHER. They actually removed the tendons in his toes and turned them the other way up (?!) to stop his toes from curling under, as they were being pulled more and more that way over time. So now he has the same trouble, but he has no ability to curl his toes whatsoever. Stoopid idea.
Anyway. Arthur's treatment was a series of full-leg plaster casts, which started at 5 months old. He had to have both legs in plaster for a week at a time, and the casts held his foot straight - well, exaggeratedly turned-out, so as to correct the curl. After a week, he had the casts removed, and then another pair put on immediately, pulling his foot further into the right position. Like a gradual stretch-and-hold thing. They only stopped them once his foot graded normal after the casts were removed. He had four consecutive plasters at first, and then after some months his feet started to regress a little, so he wore night boots (horrible things!) and those helped. Then his feet regressed a little again and he went back in plasters about halfway through my pregnancy with Matthew - after his first birthday - 14 months old I think?
Anyway, the first plaster broke within 24 hours and he was just too active to keep him from breaking his cast before it was hardened properly, so the physio said it didn't matter - his feet were almost perfect - so we should just go for follow up appts and see how things went.
Well, we went back, and she thinks (as do we) that his feet have got worse again :( Not AWFUL, but definitely worse. His toes are awfully curly - inwards towards his instep, which you could see on the photos of him standing with his traffic jam picture a few entries back - Meg, I think you even noticed and asked! I forgot to follow up on that, sorry! The outside of his big toes rub on his shoes, and he does sometimes trip up when he runs, over his curly toes.
She said his right foot is worse than the left, which is about normal for Arthur throughout. He has high arches, which he SHOULDN'T have at his age, and that's disappointing, because we finally managed to get those arches gone with the treatment before. It's the high arches which will cause him trouble in the future when he's older, like Neil. I know it's pointless, and I know I've said it before, but I HATE THAT GENE! It's irrational of me, but when I am thinking about his feet, I feel so burningly angry and resentful towards Neil and his mum and their whole "line", that they've passed an actual deformity on to my child! How silly is that?! But I feel it. It's wrong as well. I need to fix that. Pfthth. Especially since I could just as easily have passed on an inability to tell colours apart! But I haven't, thankfully. I am still watching Matthew though. Any sons of mine...
Anyway. She thinks we just watch and wait for now. She said the curliness WILL resolve over time (even if it takes a few years) and that she's not worried about that. Just the high arches. She wants us to buy lace-up shoes for him next winter instead of velcro ones, as they'll give a snugger fit to his feet which will correct them a little as he walks. He's fine to have normal shoes though, and open-toed sandals (I checked!) this summer. We're going to buy some this week, if I can make time. She wants to see him every 6 months, so we have an appt in October.
I have soooo much more to write about other stuff related to our visit to the hospital - we ended up staying 2 hours and had a great time! But it's so late and this was meant to be a quick ice-cream vent (!) and now I've waffled.
Before I go, though - I must use EVERY opportunity to catch up a bit on photos! These few of the boys are a month old now! I took some photos the day my mum came to visit, when we went to the swings. It was COLD! None of the photos have Nana in them, which I am sad about, but oh well! Matthew had his first go on the swings the week before that, and I took some photos of his second time that day! Here they are:
I have soooo many more photos that are like 3 or 4 weeks old! I need to get caught up with them soon. And a ton of new ones too! Will try to update again asap.
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