Hate and Intolerance

As I write this, it hasn't even been 24 hours since our little country was rocked by a horrible act of terrorism. I think most New Zealanders, including me, lived in a bubble thinking that this was the type of thing that happened elsewhere in the world, not in peaceful New Zealand.

I am in shock. My sister drove past one of the mosques that was shot up about 20mins before things started happening. It's so close to home that it's terrifying.

I worry about what the future holds for my little girl. Why is there so much intolerance and hate?

My heart goes out to those people who were affected by this atrocity. Kia kaha.

Thoughts about the future

I see all the pictures and videos of children Patricia's age and younger doing things that she should have been doing months ago.

I wonder what the future will hold for our little family.

Will she walk? Will she see? What extra challenges are there going to be for us?

I believe everything happens for a reason and this little Princess was sent to us for a reason. We are capable of dealing with everything that life throws at us. But it is hard. I won't deny it. We'll get there.

What's been going on

I haven't posted in quite a while on here as between Patricia and myself, we've had a multitude of health issues.

I've just had my second round of surgery since having her. First surgery was to remove my gallbladder after I developed gallstones just after Patricia was born. This second surgery was to repair a moderately large hernia that developed after my last surgery - helped along by the fact that my abdominal muscles were quite separated from pregnancy. I'm hoping this will be it for me (fingers crossed).

Patricia is the sweetest little girl but she does have a number of developmental delays. She is now 14 months old and is still learning how to sit. She doesn't talk, though she makes plenty of noise. She does her own version of crawling which is so cute and loves to roly poly all over the place. She also has almost no interest in grabbing onto things. She'll put her hands in her mouth, but nothing else. She sometimes puts her hands in her food. Speaking of food, she loves her food. But it has to be relatively soft as it tends to get stuck on her high arch palate. We haven't found anything that she doesn't like to eat. She has issues with both her hearing and vision. She'll be getting grommets in a few weeks and they're still trying to find a reason for her vision delay.

She has three therapists. A neuro-developmental therapist (NDT), speech-language therapist (SLT)and a Resource Teacher Vision (RTV). They're all fantastic at helping with her development.

I'm thinking that I might start a series (when I have time amongst all our appointments) detailing our journey from pregnancy onwards. It's not being the easiest of journeys but it'll be good to document it all :) 

The two of us last night

In the next month we (so far) have the following appointments:

Me - nurse to check surgical wound, nurse to take stitches out and follow up appointment with surgeon.

Patricia - Paediatrician, grommets surgery (under general anaesthetic), testing her optic nerves and retinas (also under general), visit from her NDT and SLT. I will also have to organise her 15 month immunisations to happen somewhere in amongst this all. 

Wish us luck!