The one where Merry catches up using the photos on her phone to remember things

Argh! Weeks have gone by! Argh!

Right. Lots of big and important things. Masses. Huge.

Fran had an appointment with her surgeon at the hospital. The upshot of this was, as we suspected, they thing she needs more surgery to correct her cleft palate. It’s been obvious for a while that she is hoarse and croaky for a lot of the time and her speech is still affected by a nasal buzz, a common problem with children who have had cleft palate repair. It’s straining her voice, because she is trying to correct that and also trying to accommodate air escaping from throat and nose, which is squeezing past a gap that doesn’t close off. Basically we should all be able to make an airtight seal with our soft palate and throat and she can’t and her vocal chords are potentially becoming strained and may be collecting nodules on them.

So. She has an appointment coming along to have a moving x-ray of her palate while she is speaking to see what is going on and a referral to ENT to look at her voice (can you look at a voice?) and so on. The upshot is almost certain to be more surgery to lengthen her palate, hopefully for the final time. Braces are still out as she hasn’t got all her adult teeth and needs to grow more. She’s disappointed about this as she’s keen to get on with that side. She’s developed quite an anxiety about her smile recently :/ Still, the cleft team has grown a lot since she was born, when it was basically a surgeon and a speech therapist – and she spent some time with the psych chatting about this and she has a bit of work to do to build confidence. The psych was great actually, there is a difference already. Fran and I have talked lots about how teenagehood is fraught with image issues anyway and if it were not for her cleft, she would no doubt focus on something else instead. She’s great though, very sorted usually, so I hope she’ll move through it with some help. Once braces are done she will, hopefully, be into the cosmetic side of the surgery, which will probably mean finishing off with work on her nose till she is happy with it. Lucky girl; I loath my nose 😆 She can choose that side though, I won’t be telling her to have cosmetic surgery, it can be her choice what she wants.

We have a new hospital here and it had an exhibition in the foyer.

She and I looked at lots of bits of it – I loved the uniforms 🙂 She liked the gruesome weaponry… I mean surgical implements. So that snuck some education in.

Our Race for Life numbers arrived. Less that 3 weeks to go now. I’m up to running for most of 30 minutes now so hope I can make it through the 5k. The girls, it would appear, plan to wing it 🙄

It was Max’s birthday so Fran and I cooked him a 3 course meal. I do no cooking here at all, so this is always stressful. Fran planned it, shopped for it and prepped it and we cooked it together.

The treacle tart was very easy (bought the bases!)

Baked Camenbert was gorgeous.

And the parma ham and sundried tomato wrapped cod was perfect!

Incredibly, everything worked perfectly, timings were perfect, everything was done just right. A minor miracle. 😆

Maddy had a fantastic private TKD lesson.

And is now the thrilled owner of a BLUE BELT!

She’s been working really hard lately, definitely the most studious. She’s finished a maths and science book, been reading avidly and trying new things, working hard at overcoming anxieties, doing really well at music and trying very hard at art. She’s a joy. I never have to ask her to do anything, she just does it. Max has been teaching her various new computing skills and she’s learned to design and newsletter.

I ADORE her logo.

This needs it’s own post, but the girls have been doing some Maths SATS papers to see where they were at. That gave them a shock, I can tell you! But I was pleasantly surprised by the results.

We had a really good ArtEtc day which also needs it’s own post.

And also an excellent HistoryEtc day. Also needs own post.

We went to Wood Green and also to the Allotment (amazing how HE positive other allotment owners are there) and have been in the garden and had a music lesson and danced, cheerled, been to trampoline and TKD and the big girls are playing Summer rugby with the local team.

Amelie would like to say a big thank you to Alison and Buttercup for a clothing parcel 🙂

I discovered I have too much wool…

Read a lot of books..

And have completed my first ever cardigan back.

I have also decided to save sorting my Flickr account into sets until I am old, wearing purple and the girls have left home. 😆

As well as all that, it has actually been a really productive set of days. The girls are getting through work in the morning from their books but there has been masses of spontaneous interest STUFF. There are piles of info books all over the place as the environment, different historical periods, fashion and animals come under intense scrutiny. As well as all the fiction reading they are in a huge question phase. Fran and I had done the Russian Revolution by 8am today, she composed and wrote down her own piece of music this weekend, complete with all the requisite bits of key signature, Josie is drawing all the time and making sense of words like it is going out of fashion and Amelie is… well. Amelie just is.