Friday 15 August 2008

Non-Lara updates

What else is happening Chez Armstrong? Well, I'm having physio on my sore back. It is getting better, slowly, and it seems like there's no great structural damage, it's a strain that's inflaming muscles tissues and I'm doing exercises to reactivate muscles which have switched off, apparently. What I've noticed is that I can tie my showlaces and get out of our car without making the kind of noises that should only be heard at Camp X-ray.  This is just as well, as on Sunday I've got another economy class flight, only 5 hours this time, to Cairo.  It could be an interesting one, though, as usually when I make this trip the customer arranges for me to be met at the airport, shepherded through immigration and into a nice car, and taken to a lovely Nile-side hotel where there's an Executive Level bedroom awaiting me.  However, I've not received confirmation of such treatment for this visit yet... and Friday and Saturday is weekend in Egypt. I'm just hoping there'll be an email waiting for me on Sunday morning when I wake up!  If not then the corporate American Express card will take yet another battering, it needs some physiotherapy of its own just now after the treatment I gave in Houston last week.  Let's just say I had to cancel one flight and book another that took me from Houston to Amsterdam, then the ticket had me going onto Frankfurt, but I didn't take that flight, but bought a one-wy ticket from Amsterdam to Heathrow. This has upset Continental Airlines (who sold me the ticket) because I have changed my journey by not going to Frankfurt (I did tell them before I left Houston that I wouldn't be using my seat on that plane!) and it will upset BA, with whom I'm supposed to be flying from Frankfurt next month to Heathrow en-route to Houston.  As I'm not going to be in Frankfurt, I'm only going to use the Heathrow - Houston part of that journey too.... confused?! All this because our company is too cheap to buy fully flexible air tickets and Tropical Storm Eduoard closed the client's office for a day and delayed my return home by 24 hours.
 
Anyway, I'll be in Cairo from Sunday then I'm returning home on Thursday evening (have bought changeable air tickets this time as the customer is paying for them! If I finish early I might be able to come home on Wednesday). Olga is happy that she can cope with Mishka and Lara again.  Lucy and Sergei might come round but Lucy is now working as a waitress at the hotel where Sergei is a security guard, in Reading.  She has finished her au-pair job, and moved her stuff into Sergei's flat... watch this space for updates! Plans are being made to extend her student visa for another year, as she would like to continue studying at the language school in Reading.
 
Mishka had his quarterly trip to the salon yesterday, and is back to looking more like a Airedale Terrier than a fluffy kid's teddy bear. He is ever-so-slightly calming down in his behaviour, I reckon he's gone from 95% manic when visitors come to 90%. It's all progress though. He's almost sedate when I take him for walks now, although I still don't let him off the lead very much, which is a shame for him, but he just wouldn't listen to commands if another dog invites him to go and play, and I don't want to have to chase after him for miles.  We'll be taking him to the vet soon for a check-up, and to give him a kennel cough vaccine. We've got a friend's wedding on 6th September, and our usual dog-sitter Lucy will almost certainly be working, so we'll probably put him in kennels for the weekend. It would help him to socialise with other dogs too for a couple of days, but he needs this vaccine before he's allowed to stay in kennels.
 
The internet is down in our office at the moment, which is why I've had time to write such long posts, sorry about that! I've not brought our camera in today, otherwise I would have posted up some photos Olga took in Bournemouth on Monday, and at Wednesday's post-natal meeting.  Seeing as it's lunchtime on Friday, and the internet is down, and I've pretty much done the important things here that need to be done that don't require internet access, I think I'll wander round the office and see who wants to make the most of the rare sunshine we're enjoying tofday and go to the pub!  Oh, it's payday too so I might even treat myself to a pub lunch :-)
 

Lara Update

It's been three weeks since Lara's last weight-in, and as of yesterday she was 17lbs 10oz, which is still on the 50th percentile, but only an increase of 6oz in the last three weeks.  The health visitor isn't concerned, so nor are we, I guess she just got off to a racing start in those first 6 months and got upto, and above, the 75th percentile, and now that she's onto jars of food and bits and pieces of fresh food, her weight gain has slowed, but at least it's not stopped, or gone backwards!
Olga still breastfeeds her first thing in the morning when she comes to bed with us for an hour or two, but then it's only a combination of fresh finger foods like porridge at breakfast time, cauliflower, tomato (I don't know how she does it), courgette, carrot, brocolli, strawberry etc.. with jars of baby food, which sounds as ,if not more, exotic than things Olga & I eat... I fed her a jar of apricot and butternut squash risotto on Tuesday, washed down with a strawberry yoghurt.  Then it's a breastfeeding session after her bath and before bedtime.  Olga does report that Lara's appetite is increasing, she's moved from eating half a small jar of "main course" and the same of "dessert" to all of a small jar of mains and most of a dessert this week.  We've started buying the "Stage 2" larger jars of baby food now, with bigger chunks of things like pasta in them.
We're mixing in some home-cooked ingredients too, Olga's made a fish stew and Lara's seemed to enjoy that. We had trout last night and have saved some morsels for Lara for lunch today (fish on Friday!). 
 
We both think there is definitely a tooth on the way, in fact we're sure it's the lower left front tooth, we can pretty much see the top of it almost ready to poke through her gum. She's showing all the good signs - sucking fingers and thumb a lot, salivating more than normal, and not much of the bad signs, like sleepness nights and general grumpiness.  Her sleeping was a little disturbed last week, but Olga sensibly wasn't messing around too much with trying to get her back to sleep in the nursery, she just took Lara straight back to bed with her, seeing as I was away. Lara also developed a bit of a cold towards the end of last week, but Olbas Oil was enough to clear her nose and allow her to sleep.  I came back on Saturday, and since then her sleeping has been much better, if not perfect, so we jokingly think that she was missing Dad last week. Given the fact her teeth should be bothering her, these last three or four nights she's been very good at sleeping. We've put her down between 7.30 and 8.30 and she's usually woken once before we go to bed, but it's only taken one of us a few minutes to get her back to sleep, then she hasn't woken at all during the wee small hours, until 5am.  On Wednesday morning she woke at 5.04am, yesterday it was 5.05am and this morning is was 5.10am, she had a lie-in!  I do wonder what it is that wakes her at almost exactly the same time every day! Isn't Mother Nature a wonderful thing?
 
Olga thinks that for once we have got a daily routine working, and this is causing Lara to sleep more consistently during the day, she has one sleep after breakfast, usually around 9am, for around half an hour, another after lunch - I can't remember how long this one normally is, but not more than an hour, then another after her tea, around 5pm, for an hour or so. I'll try to convince Olga to write a post with a more accurate timetable!
 
So we're happy that we're on track with Lara's feeding and sleeping routine for when she starts nursery on September 8th, we're sure there will be tears to start with, but Lara seems to love the company of other children, so perhaps it won't be as upsetting as we're imagining. The nursery is only a 1 minute drive from our office, so if she really is inconsolable, it's not a big effort to get Mum & daughter back together. I'm talking about Olga of course, Lara will too busy kissing the boys in the nursery!
 

Monday 11 August 2008

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside.. and maybe some tooth news

Olga and Lara have gone on a day trip to Bournemouth today, organised by the Childrens Group that they go to on Friday mornings (massage and singing). It was an early start, we were up at 5.30 this morning so we could be ready to get to the departure point by 7.30. There were alot of families going from the local area, so it could be an interesting day for the coach driver, with dozens of screaming toddlers running around. There were a few babies, including the twin boys, Harry and Dan, from our post-natal group. These are the boys Lara has been practising her kissing on!
The coach left soon after 8, and I've had a text from Olga to day they'll be leaving Bournemouth at 5.30 this afternoon, so it'll be a long day for everyone. Anyway, here's the first pic Olga sent, just after 11am....

(I guess she's watching Harry and Dan in their swimming trunks!)

Reports are coming in too that we might have evidence of a first tooth on the way.. watch this space!