Thursday, July 26, 2012

long overdue update

We had a great trip, just Paul an dI and Noah. Three nights in Singapore, overlooking the beach of Sentosa Island, going to the small 'Universal Studios" they have there. I was brave enough to go on the transformers ride and probably enjoyed it more than Noah, although he went on the very scary cyclon roller coaster which I didn't dare do. We had a lovely time in UK in spite of the weather (I kept saying it was no better than NZs winter only to return here and find that in fact it was much colder here!). We were so impressed with Liverpool (where Paul had a conference) it was just beautiful and Noah and I went on a "ferry cross the mersey" and raced round a wallace and Grommit in space exhibition - it said allow two hours but we'd finished in 40 minutes - the best bit being that we had the whole Wallace and Grommit gallery to ourselves as we were by far the first to reach it! Noah managed to set off a fire alarm at the Beatles exhibition by escaping through a fire exit and being with him all the time we saw just how impulsive and difficult his behaviors can be. It meant that once we were back we were happy to start him on the clonidine his new paediatrician suggested. This seems to be making a big difference - occasionally now if I ask Noah to do somethign he says "sure" rather than an immediate "no".
It was good seeing the parents again, and my sister and family as their holiday from NZ to Europe happened to coincide with ours.
It was a long flight back, especially as the radar broke down in Munich just as we were in a full plane about to begin a 12hour flight. We sat for over 3 hours on the plane before taking off, but luckily had a long stop over in Singapore with a good sleep in the transit hotel. It was lovely that Joe and Rachel met us at Auckland airport as we had over 3 hours there.
So now we're back to some kind of routine, The boys are in school and I am studying to take a medical multiple choice exam in Feb - the first step to registering as a doctor again.
Lily is lovign flatting. She rarely even wants to vist us now and had a very successful flat warming party last w/e.