Sarah's Birthday, Teeth Problems, Swimming Race
So the 11th of Feb was, as it always is, Sarah's Birthday. And it just so happened that was when we had dental appointments booked in (automatically) by the dental clinic, so I took the kids up for their appointment. Beth was first and it seemed to take a lot longer than I was expecting. The Dentist was also worried Beth was going to inhale one of her super wobbly teeth, so she put some cream on it to try and numb it but all that did was greatly upset Beth. And didn't seem to numb it at all. Anyway once the Dentist cracked out the tool that takes a photo of teeth, I knew something was up. Even when she was taking a photo I was thinking to myself "Hmmmm that looks like there's a big hole in that tooth". Next it was Theo's turn and his examination was over in half the time of Beth's. I knew then that something was up with Beth's teeth but the Dentist was a professional and of course waited until the kids were sent off to get some little treats before pulling me aside and talking to me.
Turns out Beth's got Enamel hypomineralization, which is apparently something that one in five kids can get, but she has quite a bad case of it. The dentist stressed to me about 20 times that it's nothing that we've done, but that doesn't really make you feel that much better. She showed me some pictures and discussed a few options with me, settling in the end of refer Beth to Auckland for a proper visit where they'll knock her out and take some X-Rays. At least that was the original plan, of course a few days later Auckland was locked down so the Dentist instead has referred her to the District Health Board who have already apparently accepted the case and we'll get notified at some stage of the next thing to do. But yes, she had some pretty bad teeth and two of her back molars already have holes in them. The Dentist is worried about an abscess forming, which she has since stressed is an absolute worst case scenario.
So that's another thing for us to stress/worry about, and of course our health insurance doesn't cover that sort of thing. At the moment we are making her put special tooth paste on her teeth after brushing, which she doesn't seem to mind, and making her brush her teeth more often.
A few days after her dental visit, the wobbly tooth the Dentist was worried about fell out at school, so Beth brought that home in a little tooth case the School gave her. And the Tooth Fairy visited that night and gave her two dollars.
And yes, it was Sarah's Birthday in there as well! We did the usual thing, everyone came around to our house for takeaways and the traditional Guiness cake. I was very happy with my cake this year, it turned out perfectly moist and very delicious. Last year I think was a bit too dry, or maybe that was the year before. I got her a few small presents, a plant life support kit and some tools, a few things she asked for (swimming towel/hood thing, a fancy Jelly kit) and a book that I thought she'd like. But it was a pretty shit Birthday for her because the power was off at home all day. What's really annoying about that fact is that I'd gotten the email from our Power Company telling us it was going to happen, but I had just missed it in the pile of email I get and hadn't realised or told Sarah. If I'd told her she could have gone and worked from her parents, or we'd have managed to come up with some plan. Anyway, that didn't happen so she spent most of the day at home with no power. So a bit of a shitty birthday really, it was out from 9am until about 4:30pm! They were replacing a power pole or something up the road. Anyway, I will keep an extra good lookout for those emails in the future.
Friday night Holly looked after the kids for us and we went out to dinner to the Firestations. Had a nice night, good food, lovely company.
Art Deco was called off this year because Auckland went into lockdown again for a few days with a new community case. There were a few more cases as well based off that one, so Auckland got shutdown. The contact tracing stuff seems to be working OK though, even though the people weren't using the contact tracing app they still seemed somehow to narrow down where they'd been and when. So that's good. But yes, Art Deco was cancelled, but that didn't stop lots of people dressing up in their costumes and hanging out in Napier. Everywhere. Like they like to do.
Saturday just gone was Sarah's 500m Ocean Swim, the one she's been practising for. Her last practise was called off because of Covid Levels (they were raised all around the country once the Auckland outbreak was confirmed). The week before went ahead with no major issues though, it was raining quite a lot though so I took the kids home in the car and back, we didn't hang around at the beach. Anyway Sarah did quite well at her Ocean Swim, even though we weren't there to support, Peter took her instead. The kids and I had Tennis at 8:30am and then Beth's swimming lesson is at 10am. So we did that usual routine instead.
Sunday we went out to the Farmers Market - Beth and Theo got dressed up in their Art Deco clobber. I thought the market would be full of other similarly dressed people but no, the kids were almost unique in being dressed up. We had a nice day at the market, then went to KMart. Bought a book for Beth and a small plastic Transformer watch for Theo, which broke within about 3 minutes of him starting to play with it. Poor fella, we took it back and got our $5 back and put it into his savings account instead. He was quite sad but we told him he can get that Bayblade he's been wanting a bit quicker, so he was happy with that. He still loves Bayblades. 3,2,1 RIP is still called out in our house about 20 times a day, he's always trying to get me or Sarah to play a game or 20 with him. I have figured out when playing with him how to make my Bay spin slower sometimes so that he wins, but having said that sometimes I try really hard to win to make it a bit more even, and he still wins. It's quite fun though really, but we do get a bit sick of hearing about it. When we were at Beth's swimming on Saturday we got a text from Sarah saying she'd finished her swim and I was sitting with Theo so I asked him "Mummy's finished her swim, is there anything you'd like me to send her as a message?" and his reply (which I sent to Sarah) was "I love you Mummy and the bayblades I want for Christmas is called revive Phoenix"
Not sure what happened with my Watermelons, I got 4 off my 3 plants, but they all got to a certain size and then just... stopped growing. So I grabbed one on Saturday and we tried it and it's really tasty. But yea, not sure what I did wrong this year. Maybe they weren't put into fertile enough soil, they really seemed to take a very long time to get started growing, I'm sure I was eating them back in Jan or very early Feb last year and I had heaps. Alas. There's always next year.
We've never done Valentine's Day, but Sarah this year got me some Tigermilk coffee espresso mugs and some coffee beans. So that was nice! I got her nothing :-( I didn't know we were suddenly doing Valentines Day!
Hmmm what else has been happening. A few weekends ago we went to Church Road for lunch with everyone. That was nice, though very expensive. It was so expensive that Peter and Holly went back in thinking there might have been a mistake but no, it turns out it's just really expensive. The food was good though. The kids had a great time outside sliding down a bank.
Oh and yesterday we went up to Holly and Ages for lunch, really nice. Some fresh fish caught aboard Black Foot, some buns and a few beers, followed by a swim in the pool. I also did a tip run, cleaned up a bit around the house and outside and all that Jazz.
And that, I think, is me all caught up. The kids are happy back at school, no major problems there. Sarah is well, and the kids are fine apart from their various medical issues!!
Oh and I'm fine too!
Tim