the return of The Adenoid and how we tried to ignore it...

My baby's Giant Adenoid has been at work again, bending the whole family to its every whim, making life a little wearisome, not least of all for the littlelittlegirl who's having to carry it - poor thing.

On Friday we decided, with her paediatrician, to have it removed early in the new year. Make that as early as possible - do ENT's work on 1 Jan?? Friday's trip to the doc was in response to over a week of not eating, more meltdowns than usual, and the development of a nasty cough. Dr P sent us home with the news that she had actual pus in her middle ear and a possible chest infection, 2 courses of antibiotics, 3 other meds besides and a mild case of parental guilt for not having taken her to see him earlier (I say mild 'cos as hard-hearted as it may sound I just don't buy into parental guilt in general, and good thing I don't or I could've really beaten myself up about gadding about on international business trips while my baby suffered....).

Anyhoo, it's been a looooooong long weekend (today being a Public Holiday, Husband took yesterday off too ~ not sure if he's been regretting it in light of how unpleasant it's been around here at times, but I've sure been glad of the company and the co-parenting!), but we've not wallowed in the misery and Frieda's generally been her sunny self, in-between bouts of raging sick toddler from hell... 

And so it seemed as good a time as any to get some Christmas decorations up. I started working on these angel strings some time ago, cutting out the stencils from this gorgeous paper I bought dirt-cheap (R5 a roll!!), and sticking them on lengths of ribbon.

They're now hung on either side of our fireplace, and look very pretty with the Art Deco tiles I think....

And in lieu of a Christmas tree, I've put up and decorated my beloved Tin Town tin cut-out tree, this year with these chilli fairy lights which have 8 settings - from crazed epilepsy inducing flashiness to a slow cycle of fading in and out - depending on how the  festive spirit moves you.

Goddam I love this tree so much. It was a wonderfully generous gift from a most special friend and I think I can honestly say it's one of  my most prized possessions!

But we didn't stay home-bound the whole weekend - the weather was far too good for that - we did manage a trip to the seaside, for an awesome picnic on the beach with old friends, in which I ate my seasonal full of these... the most luscious, most tasty and delicious salt-water crayfish. Yowzer, these beasties are the bombski.

And it definitely adds to the flavour that while they're outrageously expensive in restaurants all over the world, we just pluck them from the ocean and eat them 'til we're stuffed. Take that Adenoid, ye shall not ruin all our fun!