February 27, 2008

Hello everybody - here's the long-promised update! As I said in the last post, we haven't actually done much lately because we've all been laid low with a horrible flu-type bug. Charlie's coped with the whole thing really well, in spite of a nasty cough, high temperature, sore throat and perpetually runny nose. He went back to playschool on Monday, and has been throwing himself into preparations for Mother's Day. He came out today with a decorated bag hidden behind his back, and he's banned me from looking in his chest of drawers!
Another big bit of news from Charlie is that his picture was chosen to go in the BBC 'CBeebies' comic!
He made a model of Spooky Spoon - one of his favourite characters from Numberjacks, so we took a picture of him with it, and sent it in.
Two weeks later, there he was in the comic!
He's won a CD of CBeebies music, which he's very pleased about!
I'm attaching a scan of the page (you can see his picture top right - the caption reads 'Charlie had lots of fun making Spooky Spoon!'), and also the original picture we sent in, because you can't see it very clearly on the scan.
I took Charlie in for his 24-hour holter monitor last Monday. He didn't go to playschool in the afternoon because he was still off colour, so I'm not sure that they've actually got the reading that they wanted of him doing 'normal' things, so we might have to go again if not. We have his usual outpatients appointment on March 17, so we'll hear the results then. We're not too worried though, because he's doing brilliantly at the moment, and his energy levels are great.
He did say something rather wonderful when we were having his ecg fitted though.... the ecg technician was chatting to him as she attached the pads, and asked him if he had any brothers or sisters. He told her, 'Yes, I have one brother. He's called Will.' She asked if Will was older or younger, and Charlie answered 'Will's five, and I'm four, so he's a bit bigger than me.' The conversation continued, and once she'd finished putting the stickers on him, she said 'There you go then, now you can go and show your brother!' To which Charlie replied 'No I can't - he lives in Heaven!'
I don't think the poor girl quite knew what to say to that, but I was so proud to hear Charlie talking so naturally about his brother. Pete and I have always hoped that Charlie would feel Will was a real part of our family, even though he isn't here with us any more, so to hear him speaking so innocently, and unprompted about his big brother was really heart-warming. To know that Will is so real to him means the world to us.
I can't believe how quickly time is flying by - it's almost March now. We have a meeting up at the school on the 3rd with all the other parents, to discuss the new intake starting in September. I still can't believe that Charlie might actually be starting PRE-FONTAN. It's mad. We've also been warned that the school take the opportunity on the new intake evening to sell lots of stuff - ties, book bags, school jackets etc... all I can say is I feel some shopping coming on!
Our return trip to Eurodisney is also coming up fast - Charlie is so excited, and keeps logging onto the Disney website so he can look at videos of all the rides. He's already planned out the whole trip, I think! He did make us laugh the other day though, he was trying to find the Disney website, and shouted across the lounge: 'Mummy, I can't find the Disney site - what .co.uk is it?' Scary really, the things he knows at four! Heaven help us when he hits his teens!
Not much more news really... Pete was nominated for a big award at work, and he's won £1,000 of vouchers to spend on pretty well anything he wants, which is amazing! He does work really hard, and has done so well at his job. Just don't ask me what he does - he works for one of the the big banks, forecasting figures and doing something or other with spreadsheets! I wonder if he's open to suggestions of what to spend his winnings on?!?
I'm attaching one other picture of Charlie watching his first sunrise last weekend. The picture doesn't do it justice really - it was a beautifully crisp, frosty morning, and the sun was bright red.
Anyway, I promise not to leave it so long before the next update. Thanks to everyone for visiting - please feel free to leave us a message if you'd like to. Hope you like my new widget showing the visitors to the blog on the world map - Charlie likes to look at it once it's been updated every morning and see who's visited his blog!