I'm a full-time mummy

I came across this article which I must definitely share with you guys. For your convenience, I have copied the excerpts from the article here (click on image to watch video):

A woman whose seven-month-old son died after being reportedly abused by a babysitter's boyfriend donated his organs - and has now heard the boy's heartbeat in a young girl. Heather Clark couldn't hide her emotions as she listened to the heart of four-year-old organ recipient Jordan Drake at Phoenix Children's Hospital.

 Amid the unthinkable grief of losing her son Lukas, Heather made a decision that saved three lives. Jordan received Lukas' precious heart when she was just 18 months old. Yesterday, Heather heard her son's heartbeat for the first time in nearly three years. Clark and Drake's mother, Esther Gonzalez, were filmed by Donate Life Arizona crying and hugging while meeting one another for the first time. Gonzalez was heard telling Clark: 'I just can't believe this is happening.'

Jordan gifted Clark with a red teddy bear covered in pink hearts that when pressed made a heartbeat sound. 'That's Lukas' heartbeat,' Gonzalez explained, leading to Clark crying. 'Thank you, Jordan,' Clark said. 'It's perfect.' Clark also put on a stethoscope and placed it upon Jordan's chest, listening to her late son's heart beating. 'It's so strong,' Clark was filmed saying. When she was done, Clark gave Jordan a hug and a kiss. Jordan later used the stethoscope herself, and heard Clark's heartbeat.

Clark also shared photographs of Lukas at the emotional meeting. At one point, Clark told Gonzalez in the footage: 'And another amazing thing with donating his organs is it gave me the chance to hold him again.' Clark said in a January 22 post on the Facebook page Justice For Lukas Scot: 'One week from today I will be listening to Lukas' heartbeat once again. 'I will be holding Jordan in my arms showering her with love and kisses!' Jordan was born with a congenital heart defect.

According to the news outlet, Lukas died in 2013 after being abused by his babysitter's boyfriend. Clark told the TV channel there is a child abuse investigation. Gonzalez told Fox 10 Phoenix: 'We're family now, we're friends now, our families are families, we've brought our families together.'

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I came across this article which I must definitely share with you guys. For your convenience, I have copied the excerpts from the article here:

A mum is warning parents against the danger of giving ibuprofen to children with chickenpox after her son ended up with septicaemia. Hayley Lyons' shared photos of the reaction her son had to the anti-inflammatory drug on Facebook and her post has now been shared almost 350,000 times.

She said a number of doctors prescribed children’s ibuprofen to her son Lewis. He deteriorated and ended up in hospital with septicaemia. After taking him to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital she was told that he should never have been given the medicine because ‘it reacts with chicken pox making them go deeper into the skin tissue’.

In her post Hayley said: “Chickenpox is going round again can I please remind people NOT to give your children nurofen/ibuprofen. 4 different doctors from our local Hospital (out of hours) prescribed it for Lewis as we couldn’t get his temp down. They even administered it to him in A&E.

“This type of medicine is an anti inflammatory, it reacts with chicken pox making them go deeper into the skin tissue. It was only when we took Lewis to Alder Hey because the doctors from our hospital kept sending him home saying it was ‘just chicken pox’ we found this out. He ended up with septicaemia and was admitted straight to Alder Hey as soon as we arrived there.

“Only because we persevered an took Lewis to a children’s hospital off our own back was he ok. This could have ended up so much worse if it wasn’t for those doctors at Alder Hey and their advice, care and knowledge. Only use CALPOL for their temps.

“It does actually state on the nurofen website not to take this medicine with chicken pox. But when our doctors prescribe it, who are we to question it??” Information shared with medical professionals on the Medline Plus website confirms that the drug should not be given.

It states: “Do NOT give aspirin or ibuprofen to someone who may have chickenpox. Use of aspirin has been associated with a serious condition called Reyes syndrome. Ibuprofen has been associated with more severe secondary infections.”

Hayley, from Warrington , said: “Lewis is fine now. It happened 10 months ago but he still has the scars. “My friend’s daughter has chickenpox so when I saw that it was going round again I decided to share these photos of Lewis among family and friends. I didn’t expect the response to be as big as this. I didn’t share the pictures at the time it happened because it was just so horrific. Parents need to be aware that this can happen.”

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I am crappy at planning things to teach to our kiddos way in advance. I usually just browsed through the workbooks softcopies on my laptop and see what interests me at that point and then print out the worksheets related to the topics or googled for the worksheets online. So happened that the topic I decided to teach our kiddos is PLANT.

At first I thought, I have to teach both of them together. Even though their age gap differs (4.5 and 7, I left our 2.5 years old girl play with her toys happily) I told myself I have to make it works for both our older kiddos. By hook or by crook I'm not going to repeat this topic again and again lol.

So I got our kiddos to sit on the floor facing the whiteboard while I started gathering up my thoughts on how I should approach this topic so that they both can understand at their respective ages. Yes, I think my brains works very well under pressure and critical time limit lol.

I started with explaining to them what is a plant. It is a living thing, just like the animals and us humans. It 'eats', 'drinks', breathe and grows just like any other living thing. Then I drew some examples of plants such as grass, plants with flowers and a tree.

I proceeded to explain to them the parts of the plants. Roots, stems, leaves, flowers, trunk, branches etc. What each parts does to the plant. I compared my body to the plants with flowers and also to the tree.

Pretending that I'm a plant with flowers, I asked them where should my roots be and waited for our kiddos to point to my feet. I repeated the similar questions for leaves and flowers and stem. And moved on to pretending I'm a tree and repeated the same questions, where should my roots, branches, trunk etc be if I am a tree.

After the explanation, I proceeded to hand them 2 worksheets related to the topic I have just explained. Now, our 4.5 years old girl is not reading anything yet but she can do her copywork decently, meaning if you give her any words and asked her to copy out the word, she can do it no problem. I didn't need to explain what to do to our 7 years old boy since he can read the instructions, so I focused on our 4.5 years old girl.

I read out the name of the parts of the plant and asked her where should the parts be. Once she pointed to the right part, I told her to copy out the respective words next to the part. She did so diligently and patiently. At the same time she practises her copywork and writing skills, I also get to observe her understanding of the lesson I just taught them. Whether she captures what I said and remembered anything.

(** Left by our 4.5 years old girl, right by our 7 years old boy)

I repeated the same method with the second worksheet. But this time, instead of her writing down the answers, I told her 'This word is circle means 'roots', now draw a line to match to where the roots are.' She happily matches the line to the parts and completed both worksheets. 

(** Left by our 4.5 years old girl, right by our 7 years old boy)

I'm loving moments like this where both kiddos can learn together!

Win-win!

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