Never did show you how we spent our last summer vacation, did I? Now I can’t wait for summer to arrive – totally had enough of winter. Our plan is to head for the Skerry west of Sweden (sorry, it’s in Danish, but check out the pictures anyway, it’s amazing…).
It’s March 1st tomorrow, and we will have to do with the pictures from last year for a while still, so here they are:
The rest of the pictures are right here. Summer, sun, sea, sand, swimming. Can’t wait!
Yesterday and today, we have celebrated Fastelavn (Shrovetide) across Denmark. I have mentioned this in here several times before, but in brief it’s a yearly occasion when primarily children dress up in costumes, and get together to “tilt at the cat in the barrel”, or basically they take turns to hit a suspended barrel filled with sweets and other goodies with clubs. And no, there’s not an actual cat in there.
I made the children’s costumes myself, and I wanted to show you – I think they turned out pretty good. Ronja was an American Indian (still not quite sure what to call this, to be politically correct), and Frida was a vampire princess – their own choices.
I made Ronja’s costume very much inspired by this tutorial. The fabric is faux suede, and besides this I used ribbon, feathers, and wooden beads for decoration. Mads made her a bow and arrow, which we embellished with feathers and a bead, tied on with a strip of faux suede. I made her a necklace with leather cord, to which I attached a small medallion, made with a small round Hama bead design, a piece of the feather trim I got for Frida’s dress, and two pieces of faux suede sewn together and used as backing. I glued it all together with a glue gun. I used strips of faux suede to tie in Ronja’s hair, and made an arm decoration and covers for her boots to make them look right. The face paint was pretty straight forward, but I did sponge gold coloured face paint onto her face, to give her a bit of a golden skin-feel. I don’t think I ever got around to telling you about my face painting craze, really – it escalated last year, and I love creating these small short-lived designs. Also, I am lucky enough to have girls that want me to paint them. Mads gave me a gift card for a face painting course for Christmas, which I am looking so much forward to using!
For Frida’s costume I decided to make a black tulle skirt. It was created from one of the many tutorials on how to do no-sew tulle skirts – I looked at this one. I didn’t have enough silk ribbon to add that to the skirt as well the way it has been done in the tutorial – otherwise I would have. Actually, my mom did most of the skirt, since I was running short on time, and she was visiting, but we both enjoyed the cooperation. For the corset, I found a pattern in one of my sewing magazines, SYmagasin 11/2011. It was for a dress, but I only used the top, and my mom and I worked together to create a pattern for the fabric that goes over the top of the tulle skirt. It doesn-t show so well in the pictures, but it has points in a shape that’s similar to the edge of a Batman-cape, and this part I attached to the corset. I added a feather trim that I found in STOF 2000 to the straps – the fabric is from there as well – and the ties are plain black silk ribbon. For embellishments I created a necklace from black silk ribbon with red rhinestones and tied it in a bow on the back of her neck. Frida’s pig tails are sprayed with a ton of hairspray and tied with black tulle and silk ribbon. I used the main fabric to create her diadem and glued on white rhinestones, added cardboard on the back side to give it hold, and Mads helped me spray paint a hairband black to glue it on to.
Frida’s face paint was a result of her wanting to be scary, but not too scary, and we agreed on the spiderweb combined with black and white flowers. I think she was worried that her friends wouldn’t want to play with her if she was too scary, but that seemed to work out alright. :)
The girls both enjoyed Fastelavn this year, and Frida even won a prize for best costume among the 4 to 6 year olds. She didn’t quite get what was going on until afterwards, but the prize was a gift card for the cinema, so I think we will get a nice outing out of it. I must say, I was a proud mother, because I did spend quite some time creating that costume – as well as Ronja’s, by the way. You can see more pictures in my Flickr if you’re interested.
I have two good Danish friends who have joined forces to make sewing patterns, under the name of CentiLong. I have been wanting to try the patterns for a while, but their first e-book with several sweet patterns, was for smaller sizes, so I couldn’t use those for our girls. However, recently they finished two patterns that covered Ronja’s and Frida’s sizes, and the weekend before Frida and I were going to the hospital, I made one of them for her, a quilted vest from this pattern.
You may have noticed it in my previous post about her surgery, because at the times when she wore her own clothes instead of her nightgown, she wanted to wear the vest as well.
Now, after we returned from hospital, Ronja wanted one like it, and I finished her’s a few days ago. I made this bias tape myself – the one for Frida’s vest I found in some American online shop. I used covered buttons for both vests and the same light quality denim/linen blend for the outer fabric. I have to learn to not spend too much fabric when I have to quilt it – I tend to cut out too much before I quilt, and then I have to cut away quite a bit after it is quilted. But then, I don’t really have any experience with that, so I guess, I just need to do it some more. The pattern is great – I love the shape of the vests. The girls are both slightly small for their age, and I made them a size 104 and 116 which both fitted nicely.
As you can see, it has the number 11 appliqued on the back, which is Ronja’s own choice – don’t ask me why though, apparently it had something to do with 12 being a significant number in fairytales, and the fact that 11 comes just before 12 makes it special. Whatever, 11 it is. 
She looks a little sad in that first picture, but she really wasn’t. I think she is trying to come up with all kinds of looks that she finds model’ish, when I ask her if I can take a few pictures. Doesn’t prohibit her from cracking up, though.
They wanted their picture taken together afterwards, and this is what I got. Well, well…
The other pattern from CentiLong that fits the girls, is definitely also one, that I want to try. It’s a quilted jacket, and a bit of a mouthful for me, I think – especially because of the quilting. But I love it, and when I have the time, I’m going to try it. I’ll let you know when I get to that. I know that Lis and Christina are looking into having their patterns translated for all you English-speaking seamstresses, so I’ll keep you posted on that as well.
In the meantime, you can check out my new list of sewing terms translated from Danish to English (and the other way around) that I made for you right here. Let me know if there’s any way I can improve it for your use, or if you are just missing words. And do feel free to share the link – I made it for anyone who could benefit from a list that translates either one or the other way between English and Danish.
Finally, last weekend I made these patchwork pillows. Quick and easy, and I quite like them. After a while without time for the sewing machine, I’m trying to find my way back there – can you tell?
Right now, the girls are playing with LEGO on the floor in the living room, but last week, Frida was in the hospital to have her pharyngeal flap procedure, meaning surgery in the throat and palate, where a flap is created to help stop the air from getting into the nose while speaking.
Frida and I arrived at the hospital Monday morning quite early, and we had time to have breakfast in the café, before we were expected at the children’s ward. Frida had been feeling really bad about going there throughout the morning, but when we were finally there, she seemed to have accepted the idea.
The first day was passed seeing doctors, nurses, going through examinations, and finding our room in the ward. In between, there was a lot of waiting time, and we hadn’t been there for long, before a kindergarten teacher came by to see if Frida wanted to go to the creative workshop. I didn’t recall from last time that they had something like that, since at the time Frida was too small to benefit from it – but it was a total life saver. The teacher pulled all kinds of things down from the shelves to find out what Frida would like to do, and I wasn’t surprised, that Frida wanted it all – to paint, play with beads, work with clay, make bags, cards, and all kinds of other stuff. So she and I spent most of our first day in the hospital in the creative workshop, and every now and again a nurse came by to fetch us for another doctor’s appointment. In the evening, Mads and Ronja came by so that we could have dinner together, before it was bedtime for Frida. After they left, I gave Frida a shower, which is something they asked us to prior to surgery. Then we read a little, and I tucked her in.
We were alone in our room in the ward the first two nights, which was nice, because especially the first night was emotional for me. We had been told, that the procedure was going to be a tough one, and now we had arrived at the evening before we would be putting her to sleep on the operating table. So I was alone in the room with sleeping Frida, and my imagination about what was to come in the following days. After I had gone to sleep, I kept waking up that night, and I really didn’t get a good night’s sleep.
We got up in the morning, early enough for Frida to have something to drink before she wasn’t allowed anymore. She was going to surgery at around 9 a.m., so the next few hours were really just about passing time, and making sure she was ok – as ok as could be expected. After she had a drink, a doctor came to put surface anaesthetic cream on her hands just like last time, to make sure she wouldn’t feel the needle they would use to give her the anaesthetics before surgery. I dressed her in hospital clothes, which brought out tears – I think that the reality of surgery was just really getting close at that point. Afterwards, she asked if she could play games on the computer, and I got it out of our bag, so she could dive into a different world.
Around 8 o’clock, Mads arrived. Frida was clearly nervous about what was going to happen in a shutting-down kind of manner, and despite all efforts from us to not make a big deal of it, she probably knew quite well, we weren’t too keen on it either.
Shortly before 9, a nurse came to have her drink a drug to make her drowsy and relaxed. Judging by the way she looked and behaved, it worked well right away, and she went from tense and withdrawn, to rather goofy and seemingly without a worry in the world.
A hospital porter came to take her down to the operating room, and Mads and I followed, of course – as did her bunny, Nanna. Outside the room we were dressed in gowns and hats while waiting for the room to be ready for Frida. Just before we were going in, Mads felt sick, and had to sit down, so I was alone with the anaesthetic doctors and Frida in the operating room. While I was sitting beside Frida, holding her hand, they tried to insert the needle with the plastic tube for the anaesthetic, but they couldn’t find a proper vein and were afraid it would hurt her, and eventually they decided to put her to sleep using the mask instead and insert the tube afterwards. So I sang “Solen er så rød, Mor” (Danish lullaby) while she was put to sleep. All three verses. She seemed so small and vulnerable, and I just hated leaving her there, even knowing that the doctors and nurses really are great at what they do.
Then we waited. The waiting is awful.
Mads went for a run in the nearby park to clear his head, and I took a shower and went to get myself some breakfast from the café on the first floor. I wasn’t hungry, and I ended up not really eating anything. Another trip with Mads after his run to the kiosk downstairs. We bought a small present for Frida for when she was ready for that after surgery. And then we waited some more. Finally the nurse told us it was time to go to the recovery room that Frida had been brought to after surgery. We hurried over there, and found her still sleeping.
We sat there for 5 hours, well entertained by a very sweet and cheerful nurse that kept an eye on Frida’s recovery. Frida woke up now and then, letting us know if she was in pain, and helping the nurse adjust the amount of morphine. Mads and I smiled, because the first time she woke and seemed a bit troubled, the nurse asked her what was her favourite thing in the world to do. I think it came as a little bit of a surprise to us, when she silently replied “sailing”, and the nurse told her she should go back to sleep and dream about that. She also told the nurse why sailing was her favourite thing, but we couldn’t make that out, so I guess that’ll be their little secret.
While in the recovery room, she had water and crushed popsicles to eat, whenever she was sufficiently awake. She complained quite a bit about pain, and her morphine dose was adjusted several times. When finally the nurse thought she was ready, we were taken back up to our room in the children’s ward. It was late in the afternoon, and she mostly slept for the rest of the day. Nurses came frequently to make sure she didn’t feel too much pain, and the first few days, she had several kinds of pain-relievers. Mads and I had dinner in the room, before he went home, and Frida didn’t wake up until quite a bit later, when she wanted to come over to my bed for a while. At that time, she wanted to change back to her own night gown again – that meant a lot to her.
Next day, things started to improve slowly. She was allowed to have any kind of soft meal she wanted, which included pancakes with icecream. She had that a few times the first day. She was still tired, and irritated by the stitches in her palate, but we did spend some time in the workshop, creating things. We had a new room mate at the end of the day, 7 year-old Viktor, who was scheduled for the same procedure Frida had the following day. They quickly picked up conversation, as Viktor wanted to see the plastic tube in her hand, and they both liked playing cards – Go fish, in particular.
Thursday afternoon, Ronja came with Mads to visit, and it became clear to everyone, that Ronja was just the highlight of Frida’s time in the hospital. When she was there, Frida had high spirits, played, and had fun – as you see below she even felt good enough to get cheeky. Ronja read to her, and was all-in-all the most considerate big sister a little girl could want.
The days in the hospital were long. In spite of the very sweet nurses, the brilliant teachers in the creative workshop, good company in the ward, and pancakes with ice cream for lunch, Frida just didn’t really seem happy, until we were told Saturday, that we could go home – one day earlier than expected. That made her happy – and me as well. So we packed up our stuff, and had Mads and Ronja come and pick us up a few hours later, after Frida had a nap and some lunch.
Check out how big she got since the last time, she had surgery.
All the pictures from the hospital are right here.
Now we are all home, and Frida is pretty much back to normal. She still has pain-relieving medicine 4 times a day, and she has to eat soft food, and not get her pulse up. But other than that she’s good, and she looks so much forward to going back to kindergarten in a little more than a week. A few of her friends have visited and brought presents – so sweet!
All-in-all I would say, that it has been tough – it just is, when you have to put your child through surgery. But other than that, I think it hasn’t been as bad, as I was afraid of. The nurses and doctors have been great, and noone could have done more to make Frida feel at home and comfortable in the hospital. So that’s it for this time – and hopefully there won’t be more. Now we are just looking ahead to Frida starting school in April.
I thought I’d tell you – we now have an appointment at the throat specialists, and it’s scheduled for Wednesday next week. We have been asked to practice using a nasal spray for Frida before the appointment, because that is how she will be anaesthetized, before having a small camera run in through her nose. We got a nasal spray with saltwater at the pharmacy, and it came as quite a positive surprise to me that she actually thinks it’s fun to use it – really! Who would have thought? :)
Her birthday is coming up soon, and this year she will be celebrating her birthday during a weekend, with her friends from the child care, but without the nursery nurses or the parents (besides us) there. She is looking SO much forward to it, and she handed out invitations today – I wanted to show you, because quite frankly, I had a lot of fun making them.
I googled birthday invitations to find inspiration, and I came across these lollipop birthday invitations. I thought they were really sweet, and so I was on it. This is the result:
Made with cardboard, paper, ribbon, rhinestone, glue stick, and glue gun. The text is made in Word and printed on our ordinary printer.
Now, let’s just hope that all the little girls can attend.
It’s rather late Saturday evening, and like many times before I have been looking back at the post about Frida’s Surgery when she was 18 months old. This time, though, the reason is different than what is has been before.
Frida and I were at the speech therapist’s Thursday afternoon, and just like all the other times, she was doing great at the tasks, she was given. But this time, however well she did, it didn’t change the fact that too much air slipped out of her nose, while she was speaking. I had a chat with the very nice speech therapist after the different tests, and she told me, that she was confident, Frida would need second surgery. Of course, we more or less knew already, because Frida’s voice has been really nasal for quite some time now, but we weren’t sure whether she would grow out of it. Or whether maybe we could do some voice training to help her. But that was a no. In the speech therapist’s professional opinion, Frida is so good at pronunciation, and has such a big vocabulary, that the two things together show quite clearly, she is doing all she can. So if too much air still slips out of her nose, it means her palate is just too short for her to work it correctly.
The conclusion is that Frida will need a second round of surgery. We spoke a bit about the ‘when’, and agreed that while it may be sweet to have the voice of Karen from Will & Grace when you’re less than 5, it’s probably not perceived in quite the same way when you’re a few years older. Also she is starting school next year in April, so the sooner the better. And now Frida will be scheduled for surgery, probably within the next 6 months. While I was talking to the speech therapist, we were both doing our best to use words that Frida wouldn’t understand, switching to English at times, and all in all just trying to make sure she wouldn’t understand what we were talking about. We weren’t successful. I don’t know what Frida got, but while she usually enjoys the visits there, as soon as we started talking about what was coming, Frida just wanted to leave. She pulled my arm, and said she wanted to go home.
So, what is coming? First we will be scheduled for an appointment with a throat specialist. He will run a camera down through her nose to look at her palate from above, while Frida has to say different things. This will give them insight into how Frida’s palate works. Next, we will have an appointment with the surgeons prior to scheduling the operation. If they all agree, next in line is surgery – what’s known as pharyngeal flap procedure.
This is all not that dramatic. It’s a good thing, really, because they will be able to help Frida towards her being able to use her voice better than she does now. I am just more affected by it, than I expected. Perhaps because, while I may have been expecting the procedure, I didn’t expect them to draw the conclusion so soon. When we left there, it felt a bit like I had been punched in the gut, and I had to try hard not to show Frida, as she was already upset. I know, when I have had a bit more time to get used to it, I will see all the good things that will hopefully come out if it, but remembering how tough the first operation was, I just need to grow accustomed to the thought. Well, well.