painting, baking, swimming and broken things

Alright, i don't even know where to start to be honest! These past few weeks have been a blur.  I have been trying to think how to summarise them, and i was going to say that our main activities seem to have been painting, baking, swimming and spending hours and hours on rightmove, but actually, we have also had a broken boiler, broken tumble dryer and broken dog to a certain extent, so they have also been quite big features :(

The boiler has since been replaced and the tumble dryer is now what you might call "temperamental" or "dodgy", or Chris's preferred term: "Possessed".  Haha.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I have neither the energy nor inclination to do anything other than feel slightly peeved about it right now, as the evening that it first broke, was also the evening i found a lump on the dog's neck :(

That's Fudge, our 5 year old springer spaniel.  Two years ago he had a nasty accident with a stick in the park and needed some pretty major surgery afterwards.  When i first found this lump i didn't connect that it could be related to that as it seems like a lifetime ago, and anyway, i'm sure pretty much everyone's first thought on finding, or even hearing the word "lump" is "Cancer" right? Certainly mine was.  Our vet referred us straight back to a soft tissue specialist at North West Surgeons, and we had an appointment just a few days later.  We saw the same specialist as last time, and she is brilliant, she told us the two most likely possibilities were a thyroid tumor, or else something related to his stick injury.  He had a sample of fluid taken from the lump and that was sent away and we had the first set of results on Monday and the rest yesterday, the conclusion being that it is definitely not a thyroid tumour (yay!) and that his cultures came back positive so there's a chance that the swelling may respond to antibiotics, which is what we're now trying- a 2 week course of antibiotics and a weeks course of anti-inflammatories and crossing all our fingers, toes and general appendages that it works to reduce the lump in size.

We are of course insured, but sadly that will be of entirely NO use whatsoever if it turns out to definitely be related to his accident as we're only insured for up to £7,000 per condition and we already used that full £7,000 when the accident first happened.  (Crazy, i know, but the MRI scan to find the piece of stick inside him cost £1500 alone, then there were the xrays, endoscopies, samples, blood tests, IVs, medications, overnight stays, out of hours consultations and multiple GA's and surgeries, it all mounts up!) At the time we just felt lucky.  Lucky that he survived and lucky that we had the insurance to give him the best possible treatment and outcome.  We still had to pay an excess £70 plus 10% of the total cost but £700 is very different to £7,000!

So this time it's pretty scary to be honest, if his lump doesn't respond to the antibiotics i'm not sure what we'll do.  Luckily he's clinically very well and it doesn't seem to be causing him any problems, but if that changes further down the line, the next step would be another MRI or CT scan (i.e. another £1500 just to see what we're dealing with) and we just don't have that kind of money lying around.  By which i mean, we actually don't.  I wish it were the case that we did have that kind of money tucked away but earmarked for something else, and then we could say "Oh, we'll just have to use it for fudge's scan instead" but it just doesn't exist.  We do have a little back-up for emergencies, so far, this time, his consultations and meds have run into the £100's and we're still all eating and not pawning our kidneys, but like i say, hundreds and thousands are a bit different, so it's all a bit of a worry. Also it's a little infuriating, as this is exactly the reason you have pet insurance, so you don't have this kind of stress on top of the stress of your animal being sick, so finding out it's essentially useless is more than a tad frustrating.

So, moving swiftly on (so as not to depress myself too much there!) Let's talk about the painting, baking and swimming instead!

Toby's been feeling quite creative recently, wanting to do painting and playdough and colouring in and wanting to help me in the kitchen etc so i've been trying to embrace that (as much as circumstances allow!) Plus the weather has been wet and windy so we've been trying to have nice dry indoorsy type fun!  Last week we did some easel painting, some finger painting and we baked some banana and bran flake muffins, which sound quite unappetising but were actually a big hit with everyone!

We also FINALLY went on our first family swimming trip- hurray!  The water was f-f-f-freeeeeezing compared to the pool we have our Aquababies lessons in, so that was a real shock to the system but the boys still seemed to enjoy themselves.  Rudy had his little wetsuit on so he managed to last half an hour in the baby pool/jacuzzi pool, Toby was just in his little happy nappy swimming trunks but was determined to stay in with Daddy when me and Rudy got out, and ended up staying in for just over an hour, although Chris did say that even then he still didn't want to get out but Chris had to insist as Toby's lips were turning blue!  They were both clearly cold, damp and cranky in the changing rooms after but zonked out fast asleep in the car on the way home which was a bonus!  We didn't get any pictures, i'm pretty sure you'd get arrested for even taking a camera to a public pool these days, which is a little sad i suppose, but we do have photos from Rudy's Aquababies lesson last week, as with Chris being off last week he was able to come along and watch.

He's really enjoying the lessons so far, we had another this afternoon and he was splashing and chatting away to himself.  He's a real chatterbox these days and makes some really strange gurgly sounds, i was saying yesterday that he sounds a bit like a chicken laying an egg when he's tired and talking to himself.  Seriously.  It wasn't so funny last night as he randomly woke up and started talking to us in the middle of the night and wasn't for going back to sleep at all.  God knows what time it was, we don't have a clock in the bedroom as i figure it would just depress me knowing how much of the night i was awake for, but i'd guess it was proper middle of the night- it had a "far-too-late-for-a-late-night-but-far-too-early-to-be-up-early" kind of feel.  In my sleep-deprived rage i told Chris that when we move house Rudy is going in his own room because i WANT TO SLEEP! So today Chris asked if i was serious but i don't think i am really.  If anything i'd probably get less sleep as he feeds so bloody much i'd just spend the entire night pottering about across the landing (sigh)

Anyway, i'd better leave it there.  I appreciate i haven't quite rounded things off, and may have left people puzzling about the whole moving house business, and i also haven't talked about the fact Toby is leaving nursery at all either, but this is becoming a somewhat mammoth entry as it is and anyway i'm sure i can hear some stirring on the baby monitor.  TO BE CONTINUED i guess ;)