OK, a bunch of stuff has been happening in the past few weeks. Let's start with Miss M's eyes. We saw the opthamologist last week, he was quite happy with her visual development, and said it's where he expects it to be for her age. However, her esotropia is not getting better, and we have to start patching her right eye to strengthen the left one. There will be surgery at some point after M uses her eyes more equally and before she turns two. The first two times I tried to buy eye patches, the pharmacy assistants hadn't heard of orthoptic patches, so I was sent to the wrong product (a standard, sterile adult-size eye patch, with no sticky stuff). Yesterday I finally found the right ones, which are easier to get on than the contraption we had her in yesterday ... tape over half her face, poor thing. The patches aren't fun to put on or remove, but hopefully M will get used to them.
On Saturday, Brett and Lexie came over and we spent the day cleaning up our yard (lots and lots of old palm branches/fronds pilling up around the place). 380kgs of green waste was taken to the dump. Awesome effort, which took pretty much all day - Brett was the only one who expected it would take that long! We finished the day with fish and chips on the deck. Thanks guys!! Just don't ever touch my cycad again ... :)
Sunday was my first Mothers' Day. Matilda celebrated by waking me at 5, 5:30-6, 6:30 and then finally at 7:30. I received a very nice swatch watch, and then John cooked us brekky.
We had a late morning tea with John's family, which was followed by a yummy lunch, and then my Mum and Grandma came over for roast chicken dinner. It was a great day, but a bit unsettled for M. After all the action of the weekend, she slept very well on Monday!
Yesterday, we went to check out the childcare centre that has a couple of days available for M. It's a block away from work, so very convenient, and they have an open door policy for parents (so either of us could pop in and feed M at lunch time, if we wanted). I think M will love it there, and have so much fun playing with the other kids. The staff seem very caring and experienced, and we can gradually start childcare with just an hour or two next week, which is what I'd hoped - I didn't want to be trying to start back at work on the same day M started childcare! The staff fill out lots of forms through the day for the parents about what the kids ate, what appeared in their nappies, how they played, etc, etc, so you can have a pretty good idea of what kind of day your child has had.